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If you want to get a Russian biometric passport, you have to have your picture taken in the office of the issuing authority.

However, it seems like for the American biometric passport, you provide your own photographs. I guess this is potentially linked to the idea that the US is a private-enterprise-based economy, thus the government cannot simply take away from the photo shop business. However, this does seem to lessen the security and authenticity of the American passport as a device, and it is also different from the procedures employed by the DPS and DMV offices in the individual states, which, to my knowledge, always take in-house photographs for their identification cards and driver licences.

What about other countries? Do most countries require in-person appearance and photographs for a biometric passport, or do they let you provide your own pre-made photographs, with or without a personal appearance?

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    I don't think it's really a free-enterprise issue; as shown by the DMV, the government could certainly take the photos itself if it wanted/needed to. I suspect it's more that the State Department doesn't want the expense of operating hundreds of field offices and has judged that having people send in photos provides adequate security. May 18, 2015 at 15:55
  • @NateEldredge, I actually think it might be both -- states and federal government are different domains. Federal government still doesn't let you file taxes electronically without using a third-party, whereas California, for example, does.
    – cnst
    May 18, 2015 at 16:06
  • In Italy you provide your own photos. These have to comply with certain standards, though, at the risk of being refused if they don't.
    – JoErNanO
    May 18, 2015 at 16:26
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    In the US you provide your own photos, but since you must file your initial application in person at a post office or passport agency the photos are verified at that time. May 18, 2015 at 16:51

2 Answers 2

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Canadian passport rules follow rules similar to the US as the photo is not taken by the passport office or any government location. You must have the photo signed by a person verifying your identity in the photo. This person is one of a group of people that is generally believed to have strong ethics (there is a long list including optometrist, mayor, professional engineer, lawyer).

Make sure your photo has been taken within the last six months

Photo requirements

Your passport photos must be: clear, sharp and in focus taken with a neutral facial expression eyes open and clearly visible mouth closed, no smiling taken in person by a commercial photographer or studio with: uniform lighting and with no shadows, glare or flash reflections face and shoulders to the camera: straight-on, centered and squared a plain white or light-coloured background with a clear difference between your face and the background. Photos must reflect/represent natural skin tones. 50 mm wide X 70 mm high (2 inches wide X 2- 3/4 inches long) the height of the face measures between 31 mm (1- 1/4 inches) and 36 mm (1- 7/16 inches) from chin to crown of head (natural top of head) an image of your current appearance, taken within the last six months professionally printed on plain, high quality photographic paper we don’t accept photos printed at home and photos printed on heavy weight paper original photos that are not altered in any way or taken from an existing photo

and also

The back of one photo must include: the photographer’s stamp or written information of the: date the photo was taken name and complete address of the photo studio

So you cannot use your own photographs unless you have a photo studio business. The passport office will reject any photo that looks off or does not meet their size and quality standards.

There are further details on children photographs, size of the head in the photo, glasses, number of photos, and other details on the government website.

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/canadian-passports/photos.html

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It seems like a good measure to allow only in-person photos to be taken. There are some standars that must be followed for the photography to be valid, for instance (in Brazil, at least), you should not wear anything that covers your face (face here, means from one ear to other and from your chin to your forehead). That is, you cannot have earrings, piercings, not even hair (from your head, not a beard or moustache) in front of your face. Certainly there are other aspects, like photo quality, resolution, etc. to be observed in a passport photography. If someone brings a photo from home, how can you be sure the photo meets all the needed criteria? If someone brings a photo below the standards, it will be a loss of time for the issuing authority which is bad for everyone.

BTW, in Brazil the photos are only taken inside the issuing authority (Federal Police, in the case).

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  • In the Netherlands all photographers that do passport photos have the needed information. You are allowed to bring in any odd photo, but most of them will be rejected at once, even professionally made ones are sometimes rejected.
    – Willeke
    May 18, 2015 at 18:05
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    Those standards are not actually all that complicated; passport agencies don't exactly have the most talented photographers in the world, and there's nothing secret about the standards, so there's no reason to assume that only the passport agency will be able to take an appropriate photo.
    – cpast
    May 18, 2015 at 22:31
  • @cpast, alright, but the issuing agency can reject the photo if it doesn't meet the standards and somehow they have to deal with that case. Given the fact that it is not hard to take such a photo, it seems a good decision to take it inside the agency.
    – gmauch
    May 19, 2015 at 0:38
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    @gmauch They can deal with that by telling you to get a new picture. You're really, really overestimating the difficulty of meeting US passport photo standards; if your photo doesn't work, you go to a drugstore and get one that does. Particularly given that US passports (except for minors, people applying for the first time since hitting age 16, and people who last got a US passport over 15 years ago) have no in-person step in passport issuance.
    – cpast
    May 19, 2015 at 2:01
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    @cnst That's kind of my point. Passport photos are not complicated. There's no reason to have exacting requirements. In the absence of over-specific requirements, there's no point in having someone at the office take the photo when you could have it taken in your own time, when you're not holding up a line of people (same reason you wouldn't fill out a form during the appointment time: while you could, it slows things down).
    – cpast
    May 19, 2015 at 3:45

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