I’m not the best photographer in the world.  (If you’ve seen my blog photos, you’d never mistake me for a professional.) I’d say that I’m in the lower tier of picture takers, about two steps above “How do I turn this thing on?”

So when I had to take the kids somewhere to get official passport photos done, I put great faith in their abilities to take an excellent picture. I mean, if you have a big freaking sign on your window saying ‘PASSPORT PHOTOS HERE’, I have no choice but to imagine that there’s some degree of competency in this field.  As I would find out later, my imagination needed to stretch a whole lot more….

Store 1 (A fairly popular franchise postal store) –

“Hi, I’d like to get some passport photos done.”

“Ok, come with me.”

“Well, it’s for my kids.”

“Oh, we don’t do children passport photos.”

“Um, why?”

“They’re features are smaller and harder to get on film.”

“Ah, ok.” (Translation: I think they’ve been adequately capturing children on film for over 100 years, but maybe those were baby gorillas. I don’t know.)

Store 2 (An even more popular postal, printing, and shipping store) –

“Hi, I’d like to get some passport photos done for my kids.”

“Sure, we do that. Hold on while I get the camera.”

She pulls out a big gray box the size of a bowling ball and leads us to the white screen. It takes her a minute to set up and I focus on trying to get my kids to smile for the shot. They smile beautifully and I’m excited to be done with this before lunch time.

The box prints out the photos 2-3 minutes later. (It was a knockoff Polaroid.) I think about how amazing it is to have the technology of that big camera packed into a cell phone…and then I see the pictures that came out.

“Sir, the images are too light.”

“Well, can you set it up so that it adjusts the white balance automatically?”

“I really don’t know how to use this camera.”

“So, what do I do? I thought you guys did passport photos?”

“Well, you can go to XYZ and have them do your photos. We won’t charge you for these.”

“Ok, thanks.” (Translation: Really? You’re not charging me for photographically removing my son’s nose and daughter’s shoulders. That’s kind of you!)

Store 2 and the mysteriously disappearing body parts…

Store XYZ (The holy f’ing grail of passport photography)

“Hi, I’d like to get some photos of my kids for passports”

“Ok, follow me.”

He pulls out a standard point and shoot digital camera, you know, the kind people would carry in their purse or pocket before the phone cams’ drastically improved. I think to myself “Well, it’s better than the last camera we saw. At least this one uses transistors instead of vacuum tubes.” and we walk over to the familiar white screen.

“Now you sit right there. Great.” Click!

“Now you can come over and sit down here where your brother was. Great.” Click!

Um, WTF? No direction. No smile. No prep. No anything. If I didn’t prompt my kids to smile, it could have been much worse…no, actually it couldn’t get any worse. They both look like they’ve eaten a handful of rotten brussel sprouts.

They’re cringing from so much happiness.

I was pretty damn angry at this point. The dude didn’t even look at the photos he snapped. Nonchalantly, he rang up the total. I paid the $26 bucks for the photos and left, knowing that I shouldn’t have paid a cent for them. But had I stayed in XYZ one more minute, I likely would have grabbed a toilet brush from the shelf and crammed it into this fella’s ass ear. My head was going to explode. It was now lunch time and I had just spent 2 hours trying to get some pro passport photos of my kids realizing that my dog could do better…and he’s got no thumbs.

We finally had to make an appointment with a “government subsidized” postal company and even after the lady’s exacting methods of chin tucking and head tilting, the official shots still look better when viewed in complete darkness.

The bar is now set really low for the kids’ next passport pics. On the bright side, we’re ready for a real family trip out of the country!