Glasses and Your Passport Photo!

Kiss those Specs Goodbye! … For Your Photo…
 

The good ol’ United States is not the first country to insist upon glasses-less passport photos.

Many other countries share this stipulation and for some places, this extends to Visa photos. France and the United Kingdom, for example, do not allow eyeglasses in passport photos. Read below to find out why!

In the past, the US had only banned the wearing of sunglasses or glasses with any sort of shaded/tinted lenses (anything that would make it hard to see the holder’s eyes. Additionally, a rule was in place that if the applicant wore glasses in the photo, the risk of glare would have to be considered and dealt with prior to submission. Of course, this too, would hide one’s eyes.

Glare is a classic issue for eyeglass users and similarly, this  has been a problem with passport photos. According to the state departments, this is actually one of the top reasons that passport photos are rejected by the Passport Agency. With this more recent rule against wearing glasses in passport photos, the agency will ensure that nobody will have this problem for long!
Another significant component of the decision to have glasses banned in passport photos is due to biometric passports! These passports store basic data about the passport subject or holder on a small computer chip, which is conveniently embedded in the passport.

This pretty basic data includes your name, your birth date, and of course, passport number.

In addition, you should know  that passport photo can also be converted into biometric data!

A computer program can easily analyze a scan of your photo and take quick measurements of your face, like measuring the distance between your eyes, for example, and store this information as biometric data. Don’t be scared of this spooky-sounding program-It’s just an electronic/digital passport. It logically follows that if you wear glasses in your passport photo, it makes it more difficult for the computer program like the one described above, to take accurate measurements of your features.

Take your photos like a pro and be sure to message us at ePassportPhoto to get quick guidance from our representatives!