All this theorizing, and most of it is simply untrue.

When you look in the 'horses mouth', this is what you get. http://tinyurl.com/yom74e

US Dept of State:

"Passport Services encourages photographs where the applicant is relaxed and smiling." ((*))

So clearly our European and Canadian friends have been saddled with the "no smile" rule. Possibly at the urging of the U.S. government in response to increasingly tighter security measures.

Jed - it does appear crystal clear from your link. But, I'm inclined to think it may be less so in practice, since my wife and middle child were prohibited from smiling in early-2005.

When you refer to this link, it sounds ambiguous, with examples showing 2 individuals not smiling:
http://tinyurl.com/cf5e3

My hunch is that smiling may have been severely restricted in 2005. Today, smiling may be officially allowed, but unofficially discouraged. Testimonials from non-U.S. residents seem to confirm this recent rule change is bona fide. How it affects us in the U.S. is unclear from my own personal experience.

Thanks for the input!
Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif.

If you print out the link which I posted, and bring it to the photo taker, he will <i>have</i> to say, &quot;Smile, you're on passport camera.' ((*))

I don't think foreigners are the best to say what is required of a US passport. Maybe you should read that other thread about all the delays and problems people have getting passports, and that is without having the photo rejected. I don't really understand why you are playing games this way and submitting a photo with a very big toothy grin. Well, it's your time and trouble, but that is completely different than your original argument that simple &quot;smiling&quot; was banned. And if it is officially &quot;discourage&quot;, where would this discouragement be taking place? You send the stuff in, there isn't any way to discourage your photo. If it were discouraged, it seems the official rules on the State dept's website would say, photos where the subject is not smiling are preferred.

I just rechecked my photo from my passport gotten in mid-2004 and not only was I smiling, but my teeth were showing a little bit, also. It was just a natural smile, but not a toothy grin. It was done by a professional photographer who does a lot of passport business.

This is kind of a weird thing about smiling being banned, I don't get it myself, but don't understand the biometrics thing.

&quot;AAA uses digital cameras now and will show you the photo. If you don't like it they'll take another.&quot;

I don't know what kind of lens they use there, but when I had my picture taken at AAA, my head looked like the guy in &quot;The Elephant Man.&quot;

Since I didn't want to say, &quot;I am not an Animal&quot; to every Customs person, I had it reshot at a Passport Photo place. It was much better and saved me a life in the circus.

((H))

maitaitom, I am cracking up, because our pictures for our international driver's permits taken at AAA were horrendous! They must have been using some sort of fisheye lens. We don't even look like we are looking at the camera. I'm just glad it was for the silly permit, which I don't carry anymore since I have a German license, and not for my passport!

It is really a sad reality of the times when we are expected to pose for our passports as if for a mug shot. Frankly I do not comprehend the &quot;no makeup / no jewelry / hair tied back&quot; requirements. Don't they want the picture to look like you &quot;usually&quot; look? And who is going to analyze your face and determine whether you are wearing makeup?

The US requires all countries under the visa waiver scheme to have biometric passports. That includes face maps, hence the no smiling, hair back, ears visible stuff.
And since it is easier than making an appointment and undergoing an interview for a US visa every time we want to visit the US we put up with it.
Seems very infair that they don't apply the same rules to thier own citizens.

I just got a new passport, and I'm smiling with teeth showing. If this is so against the rules, why was it issued to me? If all the smiling, no make-up rules apply, you'd think they would have rejected it rather than sending me a new passport. I had my picture taken at the post office and they said nothing about all those rules.

Probably my worst photo ever - and definately &quot;no smiling&quot; allowed since 2005 ( renewal) ... but that was Canada. Probably the same for US...

Brockbank:

This url that Jed provided:

http://tinyurl.com/yom74e

from the US Dept of State, which states:

&quot;Passport Services encourages photographs where the applicant is relaxed and smiling.&quot;

is actually printed in BOLD print. What I'm suggesting is that even though there may have been a time when you were not permitted to smile, it is now actually encouraged, according to the website.

As for my personal experience, my first passport issued in 1991 was a toothy grin and my second in 2001 has a toothy grin. I always smile when my picture is taken. The passport photos were taken in two different cities in little shops which had a &quot;Passport Photos Taken Here&quot; ad sign in the window. It's interesting that in recent years other people have been told &quot;no smiling&quot;, yet with my two experiences in having my passport picture taken, they took a shot of me smiling. In fact, I honestly had never heard of a no smiling (toothy) rule until I read this thread.

I should emphasive that my wife and child experienced the &quot;no smiling&quot; rule firsthand during an early-2005 renewal, so, not an urban myth. Just looking to clarify whether things have changed since.

Thanks to the overwhelming response from helpful Fodorites, I'm encouraged to submit my smiling renewal.

Christina...you weren't a hall monitor in grade school by any chance? ;-)

Thanks again Fodorites!!
Carmel-by-the-Sea, Calif.

It might be that the bold print mention of smiling is an older version. In the following US government link (which has possibly been posted already), the requirement is stated as such:
http://travel.state.gov/passport/guide/faq/faq_881.html

What pose should the photos show?
The photo should show a clear, front view, full face of the customer. The customer should be in normal street attire, without hat or dark glasses against a plain white or off-white background. The customer should have a natural expression, mouth closed, and eyes open and looking directly ahead. Photos in which the face of the person being photographed is not in focus will not be accepted.

Based on this, it would be possible to smile if your mouth is not open, but who can say how some official might interpret it.

Another link:
http://tinyurl.com/ysuqkv
http://tinyurl.com/cf5e3

Thanks WillTravel for the State Dept. link. It answered my Qs. I was thinking of submitting a digital image on disk but it seems that they haven't advanced that far yet.

No make-up and not smiling seems so bizarre to me because I ALWAYS wear make-up and wouldn't look at all like my passport photo if we had to stick to that requirement. I am an over 50 washed out blonde and look like a sick rabbit without eye make-up, my eyelashes disappear. And when I come home to the US I am usually so happy to be seeing my family that I am beaming at the Customs Passport control guy at Logan so don't look a thing like my sort of smiling photo. But I do have make-up on in it and just renewed it last summer.

In 2003 I got a passport for our then 2 month old daughter. She was awake when I got to the store, and as soon as they tried to take her picture she fell asleep. I made them take a picture of her asleep.

They said they didn't know if the picture would be accepted, since you couldn't even see the color of her eyes. I countered that at 2 months, babies pretty much all have the same color eyes anyway.

At 3 1/2 she's still using the passport with her sleeping angel picture.

From what I can glean from a few google searches, it appears that most countries are in various stages of implementing biometric passports.

It would appear that it won't matter if we &quot;look&quot; like our passport picture. Facial recognition software will be calculating the mathematical formula of our cheekbones (from our photograph), and a chip inside our passport will tell the immigration agent that the photo and our identity has been officially recognized and approved.

If the agent can be reasonably certain that our identity matches our passport (Joe Blow Smith III, 5'1, 700 lbs, 93 years old, Molvanian)then we're good. Any suspicions (Joe lost 400 lbs last month, or Joe says something to cast doubt on his veracity), and I would guess they could easily &quot;scan&quot; our face to confirm whether our identity matches our passport.

As the biometric software systems/applications are licensed by private companies, there may be slight differences between countries regarding acceptable photographs, depending on which company has been awarded the contract. There are certain base requirements to make the biometric passports universally compatible.

In Canada, one of the rules is that the photo must be taken by a commercial photographer. The other photo requirements on the Passport Canada website are fairly benign and virtually identical to the ones on the US site WillTravel posted, *but* if they were taken at face value the photo would be rejected.

I suspect Canada's New Government(TM) is unable to officially declare the minutia of all the rules (like no lipstick) because the whole thing is being driven by the needs of an evolving, privately-owned software system that may or may not be perfected as of yet. The onus is obviously on the commercial photographers to keep up on what constitutes a photo that will pass the scan test, as it is in their professional interest to do so.

In the US, biometric passports are already being issued in Colorado (no surprises there). I think it's possible that different states might be at different levels of implementation, which might account for carmel's family's experience with the rejected photos.

Just took my photo today at a US Post Office. I smiled, not knowing that it might be a problem, but I also wasn't told not to smile. I imagine that the passport agents at the post office who do this all day long would know to tell me not to smile. So, provided I actually get my passport, smiling doesn't seem to be an issue.

<font color="red">Once more,</font> for those who skimmed this thread, the US State Dept regulation is:
&quot;<b>Passport Services encourages photographs where the applicant is relaxed and smiling.</b>&quot;

http://tinyurl.com/yom74e ((*))

The passport picture samples provided by the US government (also the State Department) as examples (in the links I provided above) as part of the photo composition checklist do not have smiling people. One of the links also says the mouth is to be closed. So there is a contradiction here. I would go by the detailed composition checklist.