I always hated taking a passport size photo taken. Never in my life have I had a good photograph of myself. Every time I’ve had to submit a passport size photo, I have dreaded it. Cos I have looked like a chimp in all my passport size photos.

Now, what is the use of having expensive photography equipment if I cannot solve this simple problem? For one, photography equipment was not sufficient. What I also needed was a colour printer. And yesterday I got access to the colour printer at office. It’s a major Xerox MFD that does everything except tele-transportation. So with access to the colour printer, I had no excuse to stop me from taking my own photo.

First, I went and bought some high quality glossy paper. Then at home, I set my tripod, remote control, flash and clicked snaps of myself. I used the off-white wall of my room as a background, and struck numerous poses. It wasn’t easy, because I had no control over the focusing and composition. Everything was trial and error.

After some 50 retakes (hey, I am on digital, so no problemo!), I finally got something which looked somewhat like a nice photo. I always knew I wasn’t photogenic, but yesterday it was cast in stone. I then took the image into Photoshop and tweaked it a bit. Finally I duplicated the photos into an array, to fit an A4 size paper and converted to PDF. I printed the photo at office, and voila! After 26 years, I had a satisfactory passport size photo of myself!