Passport Photos for Free or Almost Free
So as many of you know, I am about to take off with my 3 kids for a year. Since I’m not wealthy I have to be really careful about where the money goes. Even the small expenses aren’t so small when you have to multiply everything by 4. We already have passports from our nomading trip to Europe in 2006. Luckily, the kids have not outgrown theirs yet so I’m saving a bit of money that way.
I remember marching them all up the street from the post office where we got our passport applications to a passport office where the pictures were taken more cheaply. Still, we paid probably about 10 bucks a piece.
This time, since we’ll be going to Brazil we need to complete visa applications which also require a 2×2 inch photo (in other words, a passport photo). Walgreen’s charges about 7 dollars each. OK, so that’s not too expensive, but again, multiply by 4 and we’re getting close to $30 and to me that’s a meal out for everyone on the road. On top of that, I just get irritated knowing I would pay about 19 cents for printing a photo of that size that’s not a passport photos. What’s the difference?! So I started looking at alternatives.
I was really pleased then, as you can imagine, to find EPassportPhotos. This is a site that will allow you to create and download a sheet of passport size photos for free. It even has regulation sizes for many different countries.
Here’s how it works. You stand your subject in front of a white wall, make sure ther’e not a lot of shadow behind them, and snap a picture of their head and shoulders. You upload this picture to EPassportPhoto and crop it until it fits within their guidelines. EPassportPhoto then multiplies the picture and fits 5 of them onto a 4×6 page. If you would like to have them printed and delivered to you they do charge a fee similar to Walgreen’s (but this is with delivery to your home). If not, you can download the photo and have it printed at your nearest photo processor for about $.19 per sheet (a whole lot cheaper than 7 dollars!) or you can print it on your own photo quality paper at home for free.
And if you want to be uber-cheap like me – I cropped the downloaded files, collaged them 6 to a 4×6 sheet on Picasa and printed my entire family on one sheet of 4×6 photo paper. Only one piece of paper and a lot less ink!
The one downside – I still haven’t figured out how to make myself look good in the picture!
