A foolproof trick to take a good driver’s license photo

Like most of us, I believe myself to be the queen of crappy ID card photos. I could never take a decent photo for a driver’s license, ID card, or passport to save my life.

When I was 16 and got my first driver’s license photo I spent 10 minutes fixing my hair in front of the DMV mirror to get it just right. I smiled into the mirror and froze my facial muscles into that perfect smile as I slowly inched to the chair, carefully lowering myself into the seat without creating any breezes that could move my hair. I looked into the camera with my perfectly practiced smile.

Suddenly the woman operating the camera stepped away from it. “Hang on, I need to grab something,” she said, and disappeared. I held my perfect smile as long as I could, but she didn’t seem to be coming back any time soon so I relaxed and looked around. I noticed my shoelace was untied.

With no sign of the camera lady showing up anytime soon I bent over and tied my shoe. Three seconds into shoe tying and I hear a “hey- look up” come from the camera. *FLASH* And there it was. My first driver’s license photo: my head at the bottom of the frame, half bent over, with a dopey look of shock on my face. Since I don’t have that license anymore, here’s an approximate recreation: