How to take a passport or visa photo at home with your phone

Find an empty wall with no texture, posters, switches, or furniture in frame. White or off-white works for most destinations, but check yours first — the UK rejects pure white and wants light grey or cream, while China requires pure white (see the background column by country). If your wall has a color cast, pin a smooth white or grey bedsheet flat behind you.

Face a large window with a sheer curtain, or two soft lights placed symmetrically in front of you. The goal is flat, even light with no shadow on your face. Do not use a single overhead light, do not shoot with a window to one side, and never use direct flash — it causes glare and red-eye. Stand 3–4 feet (about 1.5 m) in front of the wall so your own shadow falls off the frame.

The rear camera is sharper and less distorting than the front selfie camera, which widens the face. Prop the phone on a tripod or stack of books at eye level, about 4–5 feet (1.2–1.5 m) away, and have someone take the shot or use the timer. Keep the lens level with your eyes — not angled up or down.

Default phone modes quietly smooth skin, enlarge eyes and blur the background — all of which fail a true-likeness check. Switch to the plain photo mode and disable beauty mode, portrait mode, filters, and any smart HDR or scene optimization. After shooting, look for unnaturally smooth skin or a blurred background and reshoot if you see it.

Face the camera straight on with shoulders square. Neutral expression, mouth closed, both eyes open and clearly visible, head not tilted. Take your glasses off — almost every country bans them now (see the glasses rules by country). Clear hair off your forehead and eyes; for China and Korea’s K-ETA, tuck it behind your ears so both ears show. Remove hats and large earrings.

Shoot ten to twenty frames in a row. Expressions and eye openness vary more than you think between shots. Pick the sharpest one with the most neutral expression — the one that feels slightly “too serious” usually reads as correct.

Crop to the exact dimensions for your destination and put the head in the right band — US 50–69% of the height, Schengen / Australia / Japan 70–80%. Crop from the full-resolution original, never from a photo already cropped for another country. Every size and ratio is in the size-by-country guide.

Save as a JPEG in color at high quality. If your destination caps the file size — Korea’s K-ETA at 100 KB and China at 120 KB are the tightest — reduce the pixel dimensions first, then re-export. Do not crush the JPEG quality on a large image, which leaves blocky compression artifacts.

Run the finished photo through a free check against your destination’s official rules before uploading or printing. It is far cheaper to catch a too-small head or a stray shadow now than to lose an appointment or get a Request for Evidence later.