I just paid £17 to have my passport photo taken and it is NOT MY FACE

[HarrietKettle]

I mean, I suppose it must be.

I look like I've just been arrested for drink driving offences, under the influence, and it's 4am in a downtown NY drunk-tank.

This is going on my ZSL pass for my charges and I to visit the zoo (I'm a nanny) so not ideal.

I applied make up. I brushed my hair. I wore a jaunty shade. I skipped along to Snappy-Fucking-Snaps on Charlotte Steet, London as I thought they'd take a nicer photo than my local one in Acton.

The lady asked me which one I wanted, they were all shite but one didn't make me want to cut my head off, I said that one please, she robbed me of my £17.99 and I said I'd pop back in half an hour.

I SWEAR TO GOD SHE SWITCHED THEM to the worst photo of my face I e ever seen. I look awful, I have never looked so awful, and if that is honestly my face I'm cancelling the extortionate wedding photographer we've selected and having my one year old nephew take the pics, at least he's likely to chop out my head.

I now have to present a picture of me looking like a criminal with addiction problems to my new boss for the ZSL card, and I'll have 7 monstrosities left that will never see the light of any day.

I looked fine in the mirror beforehand. Fine.

My fiancé says I'm like a slightly less Chanel-ed version of Natalie Portman (we've had his eyes tested and they're grand but I know he's slightly biased) so WHAT THE FUCK happened. The image is seared on to my brain forever. And the godforsaken ZSL card.

Anyone else look shite when they thought they looked ok?

DISCLAIMER LIGHTHEARTED I know I'm lucky to have a face etc etc

Could be worse OP. You could have paid a bit more money for the Post Office to ok your passport photo. then spent 40 mins trying to get a decent pic. Only for P.O worker to tell me I had to take my glasses off.
Fine.
Another 40 mins of attempts, I shuffle up to the counter to proceed.
Only for said P.O worker to hand said shit pic back and say 'You're supposed to look straight at the camera'.
I shit you not.
I replied frostily 'Well, if I was allowed to wear my glasses, both eyes would be looking forward.'
Now thanks to Government Gateway, that bastarding pic is on my passport and driving licence.

Squiffy eyes

When I had mine done at the post office, I took the photos straight to the counter to post off along with my passport form, the woman serving refused to send them saying it didn't look like me. I'd only Just had them done!

I also have a Jimmy Hill chin.

And big gums.

These only appear in photos of me in pubs tho.

I look like a Russian prison guard who's had a stroke in my passport photo.

I don't know what's more frightening, my face in my passport photo or the fact that everybody using it for an ID check just says OK after a quick glance at my face.

I generally look awful in all passport photos. There has been one exception so far, but in that one I looked as if I was dead, and just been lovingly prepared for an open coffin funeral.

You need a handy teenager
Mine is selfie obsessed and I don’t think she’s ever taken a bad one (luckily for her you can delete them these days, anyone remember waiting a week to get shite photos from Boots?).
I copy her in photos and although I look like a surprised trout the alternative is much worse.

It's frankly a miracle that the last country we moved to gave us visas. All four of us look like hardened criminals who have been on the lam for three years and have finally been caught by a bounty hunter in the middle of Iowa

When I renewed my student card online there was an option to take the photo directly from the laptop camera.. fantastic! I thought.. I'll just adjust the screen.. nope, photo taken and submitted. I looked like a slightly suprised pervert leering into the camera.

I am the opposite and I take a really good photo, even passport photo. I look better than in real life and people often don't believe a photo is of me.

My passport photo is probably the best photo of me ever taken. I look knowing and wise, and I'm bathed in a sort of soft focus glow. There's the aura of the Virgin Mary about it.

My photo on my passcard at work looks like a toddler who's smug because they've eaten all the biscuits.

I had a get together with some old school friends who I hadn’t seen since school days. During the evening we laughed and chatted like our 16 year old selves, reassuring each other that we hadn’t changed a bit, yet the photos that were posted on fb the next day were of some middle aged strangers!!! WTH.

I have spent 10 years with a passport photo that looks like I am the love child of Myra Hindley and Hitler.

And that was the third attempt!

You will look back in ten years and think how lovely you looked, I did , compared to now

RingTheBells you'd think that, wouldn't you? I hated my previous passport photo. I look as though one of my parents was a horse. When I came to renew it, I couldn't wait to get rid of it. Admittedly I looked like a younger horse, but still a horse. I swear my teeth are three times the size of the rest of my head.

Luckily the rules on grinning have been tightened since. It's much better for me to glare at the camera than smile. I look about 70 in the new one, but at least it's a 70 year old human.

I'm roughly 80% forehead in mine, receding, with no more than two strands of stringy hair either side of my bloatedly round, mottled face.

Seriously, I can't really look like I do in photos, or I would have been assessed for a hitherto unknown medical deformity. I think being perfectly still brings out the worst in my face - it needs to be moving to hide the flaws, perhaps?

Passport photos are the work of the devil.......

poor man's Aileen Wuornos

That's it folks, that comment has finished me off. I'm done

I look like one of those hard as fuck female members of the IRA circa 1985 in my passport photograph.

this thread has cheered me up! Had passport photos taken on Sunday as I'm applying for a new passport. I look like a serial killer!

My last photo for my work I.D earned me the nickname ‘Russian Crack whore’

Mine was taken during a brief flirtation with being blonde. It means my hair and face have somehow melted into one, and I’m like the marshmallow man from Ghostbusters with orange lipstick on. I don’t own orange lipstick - so I suspect they actually changed my face and I don’t really look that bad.
Also, it seems to border control people that no-one can change their hair, ever, as it prompts lots of suspicious looks, conflabs they colleagues, and me showing 17 other forms of ID, to prove it’s me, rather than them take me away to ‘The Room’.

I had my driving licence picture renewed at the post office, she took the pic and sent it off without letting me see it.
When my dl came back, it was a picture of someone who looks vaguely like me, but with a squint, 6 chins, a nose Concorde would be proud of, and a halo of white hair.
It's hideous. Only 2 years till I can change it.

My passport photo is pre-digital, and is super washed-out. I look like a gaunt Faces of Crack Cocaine poster. Oh well, only another four years before I can change it

Tesco booth all the way next time. Christ knows how SnappyFuckingSnaps get away with charging that!

I have to stop reading now, you are all making me laugh so much. I laugh, then I have a coughing fit, then I pee myself. I had to change my clothes and put a pad on, bastard sick bug, go away.

My NHS smart card has another shocking photo on it - I am pale and blonde and when the photo was put onto a plastic card I look yellow.

Literally yellow.

Never mind working for the NHS, I look like I should be a patient. Waiting for a new liver.