passport photo on the cheap

So I’m totally a frugal kind of girl … I’ll spend a little extra occasionally, to make things easier (house cleaning service!), or to splurge (which is all relative I suppose…) on something nice for myself or Jackson, but I am totally all about getting deals with coupons, sales, free stuff, etc.  Especially for practical stuff like household goods, groceries, services, etc.

So I needed to get a passport for a trip that’s coming up this summer (I know, how lame that I haven’t needed one until this point in my life!  To be fair, I have cruised out of the country, but it was before a the rule enforcing that passports were necessary for travel via sea… still pretty lame though, I admit.)  My first thought was that I would probably just go to the drug store and drop a $10 for a crappy picture.  But then something made me wonder if I could just do it myself, so I did a quick search online, and it actually seemed pretty easy.  The US passport site lists all kinds of information on the required specs for the pictures, along with tips and example photos – the tone of the site seemed to urge me along -  “you can do it!”.  And then I also found a site that would take your digital photo and use a simple tool to ensure it meets the specifications (cropping, measurements, etc). 

So armed with photographer and subject tips, I had my friend Christy snap a few pictures (awkward at work, but lots of great lighting and light walls to use as a backdrop!).  I edited it slightly in picnik (even touched up a skin blemish – I love that site!!), then ran it through the epassportphoto tool, and VOILA!  I had a totally easy, FREE passport picture ready to go.  All I had left to do was to print out on photo paper.  Probably 10 mins worth of time total, and $0!!!

Here’s what I started with:

And this is my passport cropped & slightly edited pic via picnik:

ps… it is totally ridiculously hard for me to NOT smile with an open mouth in a picture. 

And this is what comes out of epassportphoto – a ready-to-go 4x6 print ( you have to submit 2 copies of the same 2”x2” photo):

And here’s my official, government issued passport (they didn’t reject my self-shot, as some totally worrisome people feared):

So, I’m ready to travel out of the country now!  And I’m totally stoked that I saved the $10 and took control of my own picture :)  It’s not a great one by any means, but it’s better than being at the  mercy of the random drug store cashier’s (exact same quality) point and shoot.  :)