Jeff and I were planning to visit the Yucatan Peninsula in January but my passport was expired in September 2008, so I decided to go to Walgreen’s in Walnut Creek to have my passport photos taken after work. I was waiting in the front of their 1-hour photos for about 5 minutes before a guy in blue shirt showed up…
Walgreen’s dude: ‘How can I help you?’
Jessie: ‘I would like to have my passport photo taken’
Walgreen’s dude: ‘ok, stand in front of the white screen.’
At this point he took out a generic point and shoot camera….and started taking my picture..
‘Click’..done!
Then he walked back to his counter without saying anything, trying to sign into his cash register. 2 minutes later, he was not able to sign in and he gave me a small piece of paper from the cash register and a non functional pen.
Walgreen’s dude: ‘ I need your address.’
Jessie: ‘well, do I have to give you my address? what do you need this for?’
Walgreen’s dude: ‘ Everyone needs to do this.’
jessie: ‘But why do you need my address? Do you need to submit my address for the passport photo?’
Walgreen’s dude: ‘If you don’t write down your address then I can’t take your picture!’
Jessie was getting irritated: ‘ok fine! I’ll write down my work address! What happen if I’m homeless??’
Walgreen’s dude: ‘ok, about an hour’
Jessie: ‘ AN HOUR! ISN’T IT SUPPOSE TO BE INSTANT???’
Walgreen’s dude: ‘It may not take an hour, depends on how many orders are ahead of yours.’
Jessie was cursing him in her head, and decided to called Jeff and asked him how long did he wait for his passport photo..Jeff only waited 10 minutes at Long’s Drugs.
Jessie: ‘It only took 10 minutes for my husband to get his, how come I need to wait in line for my passport photo?’
Walgreen’s dude: ‘I didn’t say you have to wait in line, I said the system is down and it takes about 1 hour for yours to come out!’
Jessie was getting very irritated at this point, obviously this guy is lying! If the system is really down the wait time should be unknown, not 1 hr.
Walgreen’s dude: ‘Do you want your picture or not?’
Jessie decided to leave the store and not bother to deal with people like him…
Few days later, I decided to have Jeff take my picture at the garage after reading on some article on the internet about how to take your passport picture. Obviously if the Walgreen’s dude was using a generic point and shoot camera, I can use my Canon 5D with 580 EX II! I have combined and modify few methods that I found online, if you ever need to renew your passport and don’t want to pay the money for someone to do it, simply follow the steps below, the only requirement that they have on the picture is that it needs to be 2×2 inch, with your head between 1′ and 1 3/8′, which you can pretty much eyeball from your old passport.
1) take a picture against a white background
2) crop your picture with a photo editing program like photoshop to 2′x2′, showing your head and your shoulder
3) open a new 4×6 document
4) copy and paste your 2×2 passport photo onto your new 4×6 document TWICE! because you need 2 photos for your application and because you have enough space to make 2. .
5) voila! now you have your new passport photo! just save it and print it out at your favorite photo lab.
6) now you have saved at least $8! Congratulations!
*Note the background is not white because I didn’t have change my white balance setting to ‘fluorescent’ to match my garage light because I forgot, that’s a problem because I’m sure the generic camera that the Walgreen’s dude used does not even have a white balance setting!
Compare to the photo that I have on my current passport, I noticed that I no longer look like a teenager! that’s very sad!!! Plus because I took this picture after a long day of work around 11pm, I looked a little tired..oh well!
by Jessie
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