Passport Photo help needed from DC/NoVA Dopers

Factual Questions
1

I’m trying to renew my British passport, and discovered that the US sized photos (2"x2") don’t meet the size requirements I need (45mm by 35mm).

With all the ex-pats here, there has to be a place that takes the right sized photos for me. Does anyone know of one? I work at 12th & E NW, and live in Delray/Alexandria so the closer the better…

Thanks for any help.

2

I just shot mine with a digital camera, photographically printed it out at the local pharmacy and trimmed it myself. You have to futz with the size a bit. I just put it in Pagemaker and then resized the photo to 6"x4" and printed it out on my printer to see whether my portrait was the correct size.

3

I’m a Yank, not an ex-pat, and I don’t know of a place that takes photos that exact size. But 45mm x 35mm is smaller than 2x2. Maybe you can take the 2x2 photo and just trim it down. The place taking the photo can probably take it from a slightly longer distance to make your head a little smaller. I’d offer to do it for you but it wouldn’t be worth it for you to come to Tysons for this, I’m sure you can find something close to work or home.

4

These people are saying they got it done at Walgreens. We have a million of them here in Northern Virginia.

Edit to add: $7.95 for two

5

Have you tried Motophoto? When we got our visas for Brazil, we had them cut them to size. I’d call them to confirm, but they should be able to do it for you. They have a location at the 1100 block of 19th Street, NW.

6

Thanks for the suggestions. The instructions say no home printed or cropped, but I have no idea how they would know about cropping…

I haven’t done this for 10 years, and UK passports weren’t biometric then. I just used US size and they cut it down, but now they require full head so I would have to have the US size done so I could crop it and not lose any of my gigantic melon.

I’ve found a passport agency that’ll do it, but for an insane price. I’m going to try Walgreens.

Thanks again.

7

I once had to renew my Canadian passport while in Chicago, which requires photos of a slightly different size than the U.S. and a certification written on the back (by the photographer) that the photo was a good likeness of me. I ended up going to a place that specialized in passport photography, right across the street from the Federal Building (where the Passport Office is.) They didn’t bat an eye at my request.

So my suggestion to you would be to use Google Maps to search for a photographer near the DC Passport Office. Granted, it might not be the closest to you, but it’s probably the easiest way to find such a place.

8

The official advice is to go to Walgreens or CVS.

9

I came in to mention CVS. There is one in Rosslyn in the building that houses ABC news (it used to also house Ganett News) that I normally use. I like this CVS because there is a State Dept. building across the street and the staff at this CVS are used to cranking out passport and visa photos that are of different sizes, backgrounds.