Passport Fun

The embassy called on Monday to tell me that my passport photos were rejected. The print quality wasn't good enough (I printed them at home).

The street in St.-Aignan where the photographer's shop is.

I went into town to ask a professional photographer to print the photo from my digital file. I had carefully sized the photo to the American passport specifications - which, by the way, are different from the European standard, making it very hard to find passport renewal photos outside of the large cities - so that all the photographer had to do was print the file.

Which she did, but she said that the images were just too blurry and no good. Indeed they were. She offered to take the picture for me, but I had to explain that the Americans demanded pictures of a different size from standard European ID photos. Her boss got in the discussion at this point.

"But we conform to all the European regulations for ID photos," he said. "No hats, no glasses, no smiles."

"Yes, but I'm getting an American passport, and they have different rules, except for the hats and the smiles part." The photographer then suggested that I get my picture in the US. I had to explain that I live in France, and that I'm renewing my passport, and that flying to New York for two little passport photos would be just a tad expensive. We all had a good laugh over that.

The closest photographer that's set up to do American passport photos in our region is on the other side of Tours, about an hour away from here.

We discussed exactly how I was taking my photo, what camera, which tripod, how many megapixels and dpi, etc. They suggested I go home and try it again, which I did.

After much messing around with photos and photoshop, Ken and I discovered something. When I reduced the photo to the proper size in photoshop, the reduction process resulted in an image that was slightly more blurry than the original. If I left the image large, but told the printer to print it at the small size, the image was crisp and clear. And this was only apparent when the two photos were printed side-by-side (and when I put my reading glasses on).

So I made up a new file with the larger image, made sure everything was proportional so that it would reduce to the proper size on the photographer's printer, and took the new file back into town. She printed it and, voilà! A perfectly crisp image at the correct size.

Do you want to know what the photographer charged me for a 4x6 print with two images on it and all the time and advice they gave me? Forty-five cents (eurocents).

I'm sending the new photos up to Paris today.