Top Five Reasons to Use a Professional

One might think "It's only a passport photo... who cares how bad it is?"

Well, you COULD adopt that attitude about it, but it may actually make difference with a customs agent nowadays. Here are five good reasons to care...

1. Size... Not all passport photos are created equal. The US passport photo is measured in inches, but all other countries measure theirs in millimeters. Drugstores and travel clubs have difficulty measuring in millimeters and keeping up with all the different sizes required by more than 200 countries.
2. Background... see above. The US requires white, the UK - gray, and Jamaica is either white, gray, or blue depending on skin tone, clothing and hair color.
3. Color... a professional studio will use a professional lighting system that is calibrated with their printers. Drug stores often use available light, which changes depending on if the scene is lit with fluorescent lights, tungsten lights, or window light (each producing a different color cast).
4. Sharpness... using a professional lighting system (as above), your images should be crispy sharp. Using available light at a drugstore, the slower shutter speed required to get a good exposure means there will likely be hand movement by the camera operator.
5. Experience... a professional photographer makes their living by creating high quality images, whether it's a passport photo or a canvas wall portrait. A drugstore employee may be brand new at the job and by the time he or she has figured out what they're doing, they've either quit, been fired, or even promoted, replaced by another brand new employee.

Bottom line, even though it's "only a passport photo," go to a professional and avoid getting it wrong, wasting precious time and money by having to do it all over again.

Newsome's Studio is by appointment only. Call 813-968-2810 for your ten minute appointment!

Tampa's Passport Photo Expert

To our foreign citizen friends and neighbors... when the day comes to update your passport for your home country, your choices on where to get you passport photo will be very limited.

If your native country is anything other than the US, Burma, or Liberia, then your passport photos are very likely measured in millimeters, not inches. This means that the drug stores and travel clubs either can't, or won't, be able to correctly provide the images your need.

When knowledge of the metric system is required, and every country has different size requirements, you really need to call someone who is an expert at foreign and international passport photos. Lucky for you, the most experienced and qualified foreign passport photographer in Florida, resides right here in Tampa.

Newsome's Studio of Photography, located in Carrollwood (North Tampa) at 10012 N. Dale Mabry Hwy, Suite 219 in Cypress Point Office Park (behind Starbucks, on the NW corner of Linebaugh and Dale Mabry Hwy), is Tampa's passport photo expert.

By appointment only... call 813-968-2810 and get it right the first time.

International Passport Photos - Tampa

Passport photos for countries other than the US are measured in millimeters. The drug stores and travel club either can't or won't be able to provide that, because it requires continuous updated knowledge of each country's size and background requirements which are known to change unexpectedly.

The US is still on the Imperial Measurement System, meaning they use inches, feet, yards, miles, etc. The rest of the planet is on the Metric System, meaning they use millimeters, meters, kilometers, etc.

As an example, the UK (Great Britain) requires their passport photos to be 35x45mm with a light gray background. Australian passport photos are also 35x45mm, but on a white background and must be printed at a minimum of 450ppi resolution. A Chinese passport photos is 33x48mm while a Greek passport photo is 40x60mm and Canada's is 50x70mm.

These differences make it very difficult for anyone other than an experienced, full-time, professional photographer like Newsome's Studio of Photography, to stay up to date and provide a quality passport photo that is sure to pass the discerning eye of a foreign country's passport office.

Newsome's Studio is on the "preferred photographer list" kept by the consulates of several foreign countries. Get it right the first time and contact Newsome's for a ten minute appointment and rest easy that your photos won't be rejected.

By appointment only... 813-968-2810

He used a CELL PHONE?

A recent client for a Canadian Passport photo had just come from a local drug store. She was holding a pair of very underexposed, blurry, orange photos of her on a pink background, that were taken by the nice young man behind the photo counter and hand-cut to an incorrect size for Canada. They were shot with his cell phone.

Here... let me repeat that... THEY WERE SHOT WITH HIS CELL PHONE!

Seems the drug store camera wasn't working that day, but he assured her that his cell phone "takes great photos." Yeah, that's right... "great photos." However... indoors, under tungsten lighting conditions, in a dark corner of the store, with a shaky cell phone being hand held by a nervous young store clerk, his cell phone "takes pretty bad pictures." (that's not an opinion, that's a fact - I SAW them).

She reluctantly paid for them, then went outside and immediately Googled "BEST PASSPORT PHOTOGRAPHER IN TAMPA." Newsome's Studio of Photography came up number one in the Maps, and numbers 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, & 9 in the organic listing. She called me immediately and drove straight over.

In less than ten minutes she was holding two perfectly exposed, color corrected, razor sharp images, on a pure-white background, and machine-cut to an exact 50x70mm size.

Breathing a huge sigh of relief, she paid me, tipped me, hugged me, thanked me, and wrote me a glowing five star review on Google.

I love Canadians. They're so polite (although I know how much they dislike hearing that). And when they want the very BEST PASSPORT PHOTOGRAPHER IN TAMPA, they know who to call.

Newsome's Studio of Photography, where cell phone pics will never EVER be good enough for our clients.