There I was, with an embassy appointment the next day to renew my kids passports, and I realized that I was missing a required document for my renewal: passport-style photos showing the “facial development” of my children since their last passport was issued. I never saw that requirement until the embassy sent me a reminder email of the appointment the day before. So now I have to go through 4 years worth of photos and try to find ones of each child that were passport-style photos showing facial development.
It took hours to find and was stressful to have to do right before the appointment. I decided right then and there: never again. Today I’ll share with you what I did so that, when I renewed more recently, I was able to produce the same requirements in a matter of minutes instead of hours.
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Why you need facial development photos
Children passports are only valid for five years, but even in those five years, your child’s face changes dramatically. Several of my kids passport photos were taken when they were days old and, four years later, they look nothing like the photos. Thus, each country has some kind of requirement so that they can establish that the child applying for a passport renewal is the same as the one in the original passport.
Fair enough. If you’re not a US citizen, go ahead and check the requirements right now for what you’ll need to renew your child’s passport. It’s far better to know that, in advance, and prepare for it, than to find out those requirements for renewal.
For US citizens, it appears that the requirement for facial development photos is required in some locations and not in others. Oddly, the requirement isn’t on the US Department of State’s official website, and yet I’ve been required to present “facial development photos” at two different embassies.
So, assume that you’ll need these photos and prepare for them. If you end up not needing you, it’ll have only cost you minutes of time over five years, but if you don’t have them and need them, it will cost you hours of time.
How to prepare photos easily
So here’s what you should do.
- Set up a reminder to take a photo of your child(ren). The reminder can be on your calendar, in a task manager, in a Reminders app, or whatever you use to manage your life–just make sure that it will remind you every 6 months.
- Take a passport-style photo when the reminder tells you to. You don’t need an official photo and it doesn’t have to be perfectly head-on like a passport photo, but try to get the face of your child displayed well in the photo.
- Date and save the photo. Transfer the photo to your computer or an album where you just keep facial development photos. I save mine in a folder on my computer along with other passport renewal docs. I name the photos with the name of the child and the date the photo was taken.
- Put the photos in order. Either save the photos as you go in a document you can print out later or, when you renew the passports, do it then. Either way, by having all the photos you need taken in advance and saved already, you’ll save yourself hours of time by not having to look through thousands of photos over five years to find the ones that you need.
Conclusion
There you go! It’s a simple tip, but it will save you hours of effort and hassle. Take photos as you go, roughly every 6 months, and you’ll be ready to renew your child’s passport no matter where you are in the world.
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