Where the best place to get passport photos done

[DebMcDonald]

My daughter and I need passports and this being the budget board and all, where the cheapest place I can get them done?

Anyone ordered passports lately, what's the turnaround time.

Thanks!

 

[Nie0214]

http://www.travel.state.gov/passport/passport_1738.html

Passports are $100 if you are over 16. ($75 to Dept. of State, $25 to facility)

If you want a Passport card, it's $45 but can only be used for Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Bermuda and ONLY for land/sea entry NOT airflights.

You can find a location near you using this link: http://iafdb.travel.state.gov/ make sure the location has a photo on-site, or you'll have to bring in a picture taken at a CVS/Walgreens/etc.

Turnaround time is (I believe) ~4-6 weeks. Expedited is an extra $60 per passport and is ~2-3 weeks.

 

[LadyBeBop]

Not the cheapest by far, but the most reliable...the post office itself.

We've had passport pictures taken at several places. But none of the pictures were acceptable by the post office. We just let them do it. It's a time saver, and it turned out to be a money saver since we wasted all that money on unusable pictures.

Turnaround time....just in case, I'd allow two months. But we got passports about two years ago, and they took less than a month. We ordered them in October 2007 in anticipation of a trip to the Bahamas in June 2008. We never expected to get the passports in time for a probable anniversary trip the following month. When we received our passports three weeks later, we turned around and booked a last minute flight to Europe.

 

[fakereadhed]

Not the cheapest by far, but the most reliable...the post office itself.

We've had passport pictures taken at several places. But none of the pictures were acceptable by the post office. We just let them do it. It's a time saver, and it turned out to be a money saver since we wasted all that money on unusable pictures.

Costco was cheapest for us. We tried our post office pictures- and the applications got sent back twice for unacceptable photos they took so YMMV.

 

[buckeyelabmom]

My daughter and I need passports and this being the budget board and all, where the cheapest place I can get them done?

Anyone ordered passports lately, what's the turnaround time.

Thanks!

I used www.epassportphotos.com

I took my own photos uploaded to their site then saved what they created. They create in a 4 by 6 format so you can 1)use your own photo printer to print 2) send the 4 by 6 to walmart/walgreens/etc. for a small fee.

I sent ours to walmart and spent about 60 cents for two 4 by 6s. You end up with four of the 2 by 2 photos in the 4 by 6 - so I just cut out the two we needed and put the rest away. I did go to the government passport website and read their requirements for a photo to make sure the pictures I were talking would be OK. Mine was a renewal so I mailed mine in - my husband has never had a passport before so we took his to the post office. All told in about 4 weeks we had our passports - and NO problems with the photos! I saved about $14 - as the places around here want at least $7 a piece to take the photos!

 

[Darcy03231]

Walgreens was the cheapest in our area. I renewed my passport and had it back in about 2 weeks.

 

[debbiedana]

We had our pictures taken at Walgreens.

We had out passports back in about 10 days!!! (This was last summer)

 

[Tinkerbelle32]

We also used Walgreens. It was the least expensive in town, and very convenient.

 

[tnd]

We did passport photos for my son at CVS. They wre $7.99. I think Costco is $4.99 or something like that, but we were doing it early in the morning and Costco wasn't open.

As far as turnaround time, we applied for a brand new passport for my son back in mid-June and it took roughly 2.5 weeks to get it back. I had to renew mine and change my name on it, and that took just under 4 weeks. We did not pay for expedited service, but they are saying 4-6 weeks and I would count on it taking that long. It may have been a fluke that we got my son's so quickly.

 

[NotUrsula]

We submitted two new applications and a renewal on June 29th. The two new ones came back on Monday, July 20th, but we are still waiting on the renewal.

 

[Kycha]

AAA...with a plus membership you get one set of photos free per year of membership. Or you could just take your own. The US Dept of State website gives specific information on acceptable passport photos.

 

[stitchlovestink]

AAA...with a plus membership you get one set of photos free per year of membership. Or you could just take your own. The US Dept of State website gives specific information on acceptable passport photos.

this is exactly what I was going to suggest Kycha.
we have the AAA plus so I know they're free there, plus they specialize in travel. I would hope that they would know how to take a passport acceptable picture.

 

[Takodacaleb]

I would suggest Walgreens or if you are a member of AAA

 

[Janet100]

My Sam's Club was cheaper than our Walgreens & CVS.

 

[HsvTeacher]

I got my passport pictures at Walgreens for $7.99. I submitted my passport application on June 8 and received my passport on June 29. I got a passport book, not the card.

 

[georgina]

DH was able to do ours with his digital camera and print them at home (to the size specifications listed) for our passport renewal. It took a couple of tries, to get the head the right size and in the right place in the shot, but I had some done before at a UPS store and theirs were unacceptable.

 

[MichelleinMaine]

I did mine/my kids' myself. As said, the regs are on the website. It's not that difficult if you are a bit familiar with cropping images to a given size.

Use a well lit (but not bright sun) area. Outside in the shade is good. Don't use a flash (can't have harsh shadows behind you.) Use a plain white background (we just used a piece of foam core). Technically they say not smiling (though we were smiling in ours and they were accepted.)

Crop to the specific size/put 2 on a 4x6 canvas and print out at Walmart, etc.

Even if you go somewhere to do it, be sure you are familiar with the specs. I was at CVS the other day and a couple was getting theirs done. I'm fairly certain they are going to get kicked back (they weren't full straight-on and they were blurry. )

 

[MrsPete]

Take them at home youself. It's very easy, and the specifications are online. There's really no need to pay $8-10 for what you can produce yourself for a quarter (or less).