How We Took Baby Passport Photos

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Oh my, how the last few months have flown by. Traveler #3 is now almost four months old. Between all the diaper changes, nursing sessions, and rocking her to sleep, I totally underestimated the energy levels I’d have to apply for her passport. Actually, the application was the easy part. The hard part was taking her passport photo.

All you need is one photo to attach to the application.

The basic passport photo must:

Additionally, for babies:

Sounds simple enough, right?  Only if you’ve never tried taking photos of a baby.

The day we decided to take Traveler #3’s passport photo, we planned it for after both a solid nap and a good feeding in order to maximize her awake time (and by “awake time”, I mean her “non crying time”). To prep, Mr. T laid a white poster board on the ground next to a large window so we could get as much natural light as possible.  Then we placed Traveler #3 on it, I held down her arms so they wouldn’t be flailing about her face (which often happens especially when I’m trying to take photos of her), and Mr. T snapped photos with the iPhone.  At this point, the strategy was to take as many photos as possible in the hopes that we’ll get a couple of photos that meet the passport requirements.

We easily took hundreds of photos which is a lot easier than it sounds since you can take photos in “bursts” on the iPhone. We got a lot of photos that looked like this:

All of those photos were nixed since her face isn’t straight on and you can’t see her ears.  After a few minutes, she started fussing so we tried propping her up in a seated position instead. By a stroke of luck, we got this photo:

(She’s not centered in the frame, but that won’t matter once the photo is cropped to specs.)

With that photo on the iPhone, I went to CVS and used their kiosk to print the photo. Their machine is great because it automatically crops the photos to meet the requirements and prints a 2″ x 2″ for you. The best part is that because we took the photo ourselves, we only paid for the printing which was a whopping 28 cents. Woohoo!

A few days later, we submitted the application and we’re currently waiting to get Traveler #3’s passport. Once we have her passport and my energy levels return, an international getaway may be in order.

For more information on the passport application process and requirements for children and babies, click here.