My passport is due to expire in early January next year. So, since many of the counties I visit insist that passports should have several months validity on arrival, I really need to get it renewed this summer. I decided that I’d put it on my to-do list for when I got back from France.
Filling in the form was straightforward enough, but taking the passport photos was anything but. My old passport didn’t have any biometrics in it, but the new ones do, which puts massive constraints on the type of photo that is acceptable. The staff at the post office told me I’d have to take my glasses off – but I’m so extremely short sighted that I can’t see the reflection and instructions in the photo booth, so can’t line my head up accurately. I tried keeping my glasses on to line up the image, the whipping them off to take the picture, but that was spectacularly unsuccessful. I couldn’t keep my head still when taking my specs off, and couldn’t see to realign myself with the required positioning.
Having wasted five pounds on photos that looked nothing like me, I read the guidance myself more thoroughly, and discovered that I’d been given bad advice by the post office staff – glasses are in fact acceptable (though admittedly heavily discouraged) provided that they don’t obscure the eyes or have strong reflections or heavy tints. So I took another set of photos with my specs on, which looked a lot more like me, and sufficiently like the image in my previous passport (just a bit greyer) that I didn’t need to get it countersigned by someone prepared to swear as to my true identity.
I sent everything off to the passport office earlier this week. Atrocious timing – that very evening the news broke about chaos in the passport office, huge backlogs of passport applications, people missing their holidays, many weeks delay, melt-down in the Home Office, etc etc. Oh well, nothing I can do about it now. I don’t like being without a passport, but fortunately I haven’t got any foreign holidays booked, so there’s no major urgency.
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I had photos taken at the local post office because of the various problems you describe. When I looked at their prints and checked them against the passport form, I queried whether they were correct (small head in large space). I paid for the PO check service and then 3 weeks later received the news that the photos did not comply. So I got Geoff to take some pictures against a white wall, and doctored them to the right size.
Having been given duff advice by the Post Office once already, I declined to pay the extra for their Check & Send service, as I didn’t trust them to apply the guidelines correctly. I’ve had a text from the Passport Office saying they’ve received my application, so now it’s a case of sitting tight and waiting….l.
I once used one of those photo booths but, mistakenly, thought it printed four copies of the one photograph. I was already halfway out of the booth by the time it took the second shot, still in transit for the third and just sitting back down as it took the last photo!
I took my own photos at home and edited them to make sure they fit to the nearest mm.
You could allways take the ministers advice and holiday in the UK 🙂