Trying to get a good passport photo of a 3-month old is not an easy thing to do.  After reading instructions on the Department of State webpage and reviewing examples of others’ attempts online, we had two sessions at home.  We used her bassinet mattress, with a white sheet, and laid it out on our bed.  We put Mia on the mattress and took a bunch of photos.

Ready for photo session (November 27)

Here is a sample of what we got…

Attempted passport photos: Round 1 (center right photo has us in stitches every time we look at it)

Rules are: no shadows, not too small, not too big, eyes must be open AND looking straight ahead, and no fingers or hands (of parents or child) in the photo.  We didn’t have a good one from the first shoot, so we tried again.

Attempted passport photos: Round 2 (December 1)

Then we selected one picture and had it printed up, according to passport specs.  We headed down to the passport office with our daughter, our photos, and all of our documentation.  But the photos we brought wouldn’t work because one was too big and the other had too much white space on the bottom (See top 2 photos, below right).

Final attempts

So the nice lady offered to take a photo of Mia there, although we would have to hold her up against the white background without showing fingers and try to get a shot of her looking straight ahead.

Amazingly enough, we got one that the passport lady approved of (see bottom photo on right).  That is Aaron’s hand under her shirt, so he could hold her head up without his hand showing in the photo.  I was standing behind the lady with the camera trying to get Mia’s attention.  We couldn’t believe we got a decent photo that met all the rules, and were even more surprised that what we thought was the worst photo was actually accepted.  We received her passport in the mail a couple days ago.  Now we just have to figure out how to get Mia to sign her passport…