October 28, 2007
Duality
The marcasite brooch dates the pic at top left to 1988-9. How young I look -- and was -- is terrifying. I was also, it startles me to observe, rather pretty. Who'd've thought? But I made up for it by being an unbearable twat.
Top right is harder to place, but I'd guess sometime around 2000. It was taken using one of the then-newfangled digital booths and the print -- forgotten and kept in the dark all these years -- hasn't aged at all well, desaturating something rotten. I see no very good reason to suppose the products of more recent booths will be any more stable.
The lower pair are in some ways even more alarming -- both taken a couple of weeks ago, less than an hour apart. The left hand pic is from a booth in King's Cross station; the right taken in a local photography shop. It's amazing the difference the lighting can make.
One obvious change in the intervening years is the difference in geometry: UK passport photo requirements now call for the head to occupy significantly more of the frame. This is still a bit less than is needed for Australian passports, however, which is why these pics were taken.
One unsuspected feature of the current digital booths is that they actually make an effort to enforce the passport standards: if you try to mess about with the positioning, the motherfuckers compensate, resizing the output to comply. How annoying is that? You can move your head a bit closer to the camera to make it bigger, but the print still comes out exactly the same size! It's only when you push it beyond a recoverable point that your face suddenly expands to fill the whole frame:
Which is no bloody use at all.
Faced with this aggravation, I resorted to the human touch, getting an actual person to take the photo in full knowledge of the requirements. Unfortunately, the result looks like it's a police mugshot of some recently arrested transvestite child molester. All it needs is a row of identifying numbers along the bottom in order to go perfectly on the cover of a mass market tabloid with a headline like THE FACE OF EVIL and a premium phone number for voters to call demanding the return of the death penalty.
Prisoner number 958722, Matthew Caldwell. Convicted October 10 2007, Gross Indecency and Crimes Against Blogging. Sentence 20 years; up for parole in 12.
In the event, none of these pics were called into official service. Another booth shot taken a couple of weeks before managed to hit the infinitesimal sweet spot where British and Aussie size rules coincide, sparing me ten years of travel in the guise of a murderous psychopath.
All of which is by roundabout way of saying that I am now the proud possessor of two legit passports to go with my reasonably longstanding dual citizenship. Here, with appropriate obfuscation, is the proof:
And why, you may ask, do I need this second passport? Why, to travel to Australia, of course. As a citizen, I am not allowed to go on a foreign visa. We arrive in the early hours of Christmas morning.
Posted by matt at October 28, 2007 12:45 AM
Comments
ah, photos. I resorted to home digital ones for Oman, where they needed about 20 over the two years. It was necessary to photoshop in a blue background, too. Horrendous.
And, welcome. Drop me a line if you'll be over this side of the plain; it would be lovely to meet up.
Posted by: flerdle at October 28, 2007 07:19 AM
Ah, you are a braver man than I, posting those old pictures, though your passport-photo history is clearly better dressed (i.e. damn your photogenicity!) than mine.
I decided to have my picture taken by a human for my new US and UK passports last month, so a mate did it (D was not to hand) and it came out very nicely. Or perhaps you already know this and have your own copy to throw darts at? Me and my sieve of a brain.
If you ever need another... ;)
Posted by: Alastair at October 28, 2007 09:01 AM
[Alastair] Another sieve of a brain? Not just now, but I'll bear your offer in mind should the holes in my own get too clogged. And no, I don't recall having seen or heard of your new passport pics before now.
It didn't occur to me to call on the services of a shutterbug friend, largely because I don't have ready access to sufficiently high print quality. But I guess you can get that on any high street these days. So you may be hearing from me next time I face this problem :)
[flerdle] Thanks. Which side of the plain are you these days? Wallaby has not been keeping us up to date. Our current plans stretch only as far as Sydney and the Blue Mountains, although I suspect some Barrier Reef diving will be demanded too.
Posted by: matt at October 28, 2007 12:49 PM
Hmm. I see the site's clock is still on summer time...
Posted by: matt at October 28, 2007 12:54 PM
And I thought I was the only one who did bizarre passport photo composites (I would link it here, but it doesn't really mesh with the whole pretence of anonymity thing. You can probably track it down on Facebook, via blogging mutuals). Infuriatingly, your direst is significantly better than mine (the instructions were misleading).
I know it's incredibly childish to comment, but you're named after how windy it is. How cool is that?
And suddenly I remember I haven't got that long left on my passport. I'll have to grow my hair out again, just so I can make sure I continue to have the same conversations at Passport Control that I've had for the past decade (Yes, I have had it cut. Yes, I was young then. Yes, they do all say that).
Posted by: Anyhoo at October 28, 2007 10:49 PM
Yes, poor wallaby has been very tired, and not travelling too much so not feeling like writing.
We're in Melbourne, so that might be a bit out of your way. Sounds like a fun trip, in any case!
Posted by: flerdle at October 29, 2007 11:06 PM
High streets aside, there's also online; I printed mine (12 of them) for 90p. Next day postage was the expensive part, at a whopping £1.25, all in all saving a couple of quid and getting me a greater number of high quality pictures.
I hereby rescind my offer for another sieve of a brain.
Posted by: Alastair at October 30, 2007 01:03 PM
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