MUG SHOTS
How is it, I wonder, possible for Passport and Drivers' License photographs to remain so consistently poor?
No one I know seems to think their “this is me” identification photo resembles their actual physical appearance.
Subjects universally, it seems, think they are getting a bad deal, and many wonder why it has to happen at that point which is about as “official” as any photograph for which we pose, other than those who become candidates for prints used to decorate “Wanted” bulletins on post office walls. That's the official one, I suppose, so that makes our driver's mug shot and those on our travel papers merely “semi-official” because they are required by legal writing somewhere in the musty legalese tomes.
Annual awards are not given for the Best Photographer of the Year in either category - driver's permits or passports documents, so there is not a waiting line of potential students waiting patiently in line to undertake such specialized branches of cinema graphic lore and portraiture preparation techniques. That takes some of the artistic thrill out of being such a photographer, and, as a result the managers of the card granting area, usually turns the job over to the first person who passes through the area looking for food vending machines. They like to pull levers, push buttons, crank handles - so they will work happily at taking pictures for half and hour or so before they get hungrier. I'd swear the girl who took the shot for my driver's license - the one of the bent over, crabby-looking character, unshaven, wrapped in a thick, plaid lumberman's jacket and in need of a hair cut or two, had been waiting in line just ahead of me for an hour. To back up that theory, I noticed, too, that her terse, verbal instruction told me to say: “Cheese!” Real photographers prefer subject that you say:“Money!” Either way you get that same ghoulish smile on cracked, wavering lips hats pleases such pix makers.
“OK. Next!”
The passport person at my local governmental official in charge of preparing such papers said I would have to get a small “passport photo” from the photographer's studio-shop. I don't know how they do it, but some of the best photographer's on planet Earth can come up with the lousiest looking likenesses imaginable, if it is for passport publication purposes. They use their elegant studio equipment, of course, but time spent doing such a menial task is next to nil or just below it.
Does anyone you know like his or her identification photograph? Where you work, or where you play - does the ident card or badge pic you show or wear look like you or some one else you'd rather not know if it can be arranged.
A.L.M.. August 26, 2004 [c472wds]
