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How to take a passport photo at home

You need a phone, a window, a light-coloured wall and one other person. The equipment has not been the limiting factor for about fifteen years — the room is.

  1. Find a wall you can stand a metre away fromPlain, light grey or cream, no skirting board or picture frame in shot. The distance is not optional — standing against the wall throws your own shadow onto it, which is a rejection reason in its own right.
  2. Face a window, in daylightStand so the window is in front of you and the wall behind you. Daylight from the front is even and shadowless; a ceiling light puts shadows under your brow, nose and chin, and a flash puts a hotspot on the wall behind your head.
  3. Have somebody else hold the camera, at eye levelTwo metres away, phone held vertically at the height of your eyes, not raised or lowered. This is the step people skip and the one that quietly ruins the photograph.
  4. Use the rear camera and no filtersThe rear camera has the better sensor. Turn off beauty modes, portrait mode and any automatic skin smoothing — the photograph must be unaltered, and background blur removes the plain background you just arranged.
  5. Neutral expression, mouth closed, eyes openLook straight at the lens. Take fifteen or twenty frames rather than one; the difference between an accepted and a rejected photograph is often a fraction of a second of expression.
  6. Crop it to the correct head heightThe remaining task is arithmetic: the head must fall inside a five-millimetre window within the frame. Mark the crown and the chin and let the crop be computed from them.

Why a selfie fails, in one sentence about lenses

At arm’s length the camera is roughly forty centimetres from your face, and at that distance the near parts of a face are proportionally much closer to the lens than the far parts. Your nose is rendered larger and your ears smaller than they are. Step back to two metres and the ratio between those distances collapses to almost nothing, and the face is recorded in something close to its real proportions.

This is the same reason portrait photographers stand back and zoom in rather than walking closer. For a document whose entire purpose is to record what you look like, it is not a cosmetic point: an officer comparing the photograph to your face is being shown a subtly different head shape.

Light, and why the ceiling is the wrong place for it

A light source directly overhead puts a shadow under every horizontal feature: the brow ridge, the nose, the lower lip, the chin. It also fails to reach into the eye sockets, which is exactly where a checker needs to see detail. Turn the ceiling light off rather than adding to it.

A window is a large, soft, frontal light source, and its size is what matters — a big source wraps around the face and makes shadows gradual, while a small one such as a flash bulb makes them abrupt. Stand facing the window, not beside it, or one side of your face and one side of the wall behind you will be measurably brighter than the other.

Overcast daylight is the most forgiving of all. Direct sunlight through glass is a small bright source again, and it makes people squint.

What to do with the photograph afterwards

You will have a large landscape or portrait photograph of somebody standing in a room, and what the application needs is a specific rectangle out of the middle of it with the head at a specific size. That is a calculation, not a judgement, and it is the one part of this process a computer genuinely does better than a person.

Mark the crown of the head and the bottom of the chin; everything else — the crop, the pixel dimensions, the file size, the printable sheet — follows arithmetically from those two points and the published specification. Nothing is uploaded to do it, which for a photograph of your own face is worth knowing.

You have the photograph — now the crop

Head 29–34 mm inside a 35 × 45 mm frame, computed from two marks you place. Digital file and printable sheet.

Make a UK passport photoOr check the one you took

Frequently asked questions

Can you take your own passport photo?

Yes. HM Passport Office accepts photographs taken at home as long as they meet the requirements — there is no rule that a professional must take it. What there is, in practice, is a rule against selfies: at arm's length the lens is close enough to enlarge your nose and narrow your ears relative to real life, and that distortion is a documented reason for refusal.

Can I take a passport photo with my phone?

A modern phone camera far exceeds the resolution needed — the digital requirement is only 600 × 750 pixels and any phone from the last decade produces several times that. The camera is not the limiting factor. The room, the light and the distance are.

Why can I not use a selfie?

Two reasons, and only one of them is about your arm. Perspective distortion at 40 centimetres visibly changes the proportions of a face, which defeats the purpose of an identity document. And with the phone in your own hand it is nearly impossible to hold it level at eye height while looking at the lens rather than the screen — the two are not in the same place.

What background should I use if I have no plain wall?

A light grey or cream bedsheet pulled taut and taped up works, provided it has no visible creases or pattern — creases read as variation and fail for the same reason wallpaper does. A plain door painted a light colour is often better than a wall, because you can stand well away from it.

Should I use flash?

No. A direct flash produces a hard shadow around your head on the wall behind you and a specular highlight on any glasses, both of which are refusal reasons. Daylight from a window is free, softer and larger, and a larger light source is what makes shadows gentle.

How do I know the head size is right?

You cannot know by eye, which is the entire difficulty. The head must measure 29–34 mm from chin to crown inside a 35 × 45 mm photo — a window of 5 millimetres, measured to the top of the skull rather than the top of the hair. Cropping to the right outer dimensions tells you nothing about it.

What file do I need for the online application?

At least 600 × 750 pixels, and between 50 KB and 10 MB. Note the floor as well as the ceiling — a heavily compressed image can be refused for being too small, which surprises people who were trying to be helpful.