Sunday, November 7, 2010

Because we aren't always photogenic

Taking passport pictures. What a daunting task.

It's daunting not because it's hard to do- all you do is go to a passport picture taking place, sit there and look awkwardly at the camera and a few minutes later you have your two passport pictures.  It's daunting not because it's hard to find a place to do this- you can get it done at the drugstore, at a Kinko's, or at any other office center type establishment. 

It's daunting because of the PRICE! You may end up paying $10 or more just for those two pictures. We don't all have $10 to spend on two pictures of us that don't even make us look that glamorous.  Of course, our reason for spending this money is usually because the picture needs to adhere to certain rules about proportions and things like that.

But we can do so much better by spending less money and having more control over the picture we print out simply by utilizing the right resources.

Here's what you can do. 

1. Take a picture of yourself. (Make sure you've got the right plain background and that you aren't wearing sunglasses, hat, etc)
2. Download picture to computer. (I used Photobooth, so I got to skip this step!)
3. Go online and find a website that will adjust your photo to the correct passport picture proportions.
4. Download this picture.
5. Open a word document and insert this picture. Then copy and paste it as many times as you can until the page fills up with this picture of your face. (For an American passport picture size, you should be able to fit about sixteen or a letter size paper)
6. Take this document via email or flash drive to a place that prints stuff on nice photo-ish paper. (If your own printer does this, you can skip this step!)
7. Print your document!

If you take this to a place to print, like a Kinko's, it shouldn't cost more than $5. And you get eight times as many pictures as you could with your $10.  AND you can re-take your photo as many times as you like.

WIN.