Passport photos

I am lazy, though my definition of laziness is a bit strange.

I need to re-apply for my national identity card, and in order to do that I need to have three professionally-made passport photos. Most people go downtown to a special photo shop to have them made, but I'm too lazy (and cheap) to go downtown.

Instead I moved a couch so I could move a bookshelf so I could put a chair against our white living room wall in the exact spot where the sunlight was hitting it. Then I borrowed the lamp from our flatmate's bedroom (the one and only lamp in the apartment) and stuck it on the bookshelf, hoping it would provide a satisfactory amount of "fill" lighting. I had to figure out what to put my camera on while I sat in the chair and smiled. I finally settled on the clothes hamper I haven't been using. Sounds "professionally-made" so far, doesn't it?

I took some pictures with our handy little camera, uploaded them to my computer, and used the GIMP to make it look like I had used a real fill light instead of a pathetic desk lamp. After some research online I edited the photos down to 35mm x 45mm and emailed them to myself.

I then went in to work, where we have a color printer and some photo paper that has been sitting on the shelf since possibly the turn of the century. Before printing my "for real" photos, I did some test runs on a regular piece of paper. There was far too much yellow and not enough blue, so I had to tinker with the printer settings a bit. I also noticed that the printer was streaking a bit, but there wasn't anything I could do about that.

Then I said a quick prayer, carefully lined up my vintage photo paper, and clicked "print." When it came out, I saw that the first row of photos contained a very obvious purple streak across my hair where the yellow ink cartridge had apparently failed to work. How many people do you know who are such hardcore Vikings fans that they would streak their hair purple for their passport photo?

Fortunately I had anticipated trouble and printed several rows of photos at once. The rest of the pictures came out okay.

I grabbed the paper cutter and presto! 3 professionally-made passport photos. I'm a professional, right? I'm a professional at something anyway, even if I'm not quite sure what.

I probably need to get a real hobby, but this kind of thing is just so much fun!