6 ms·

To be fair, his "photo" looks a lot more like him than my passport photo looks like me. It was taken early in the morning with an ancient camera under fluoresce

To be fair, his "photo" looks a lot more like him than my passport photo looks like me. It was taken early in the morning with an ancient camera under fluorescent lights at a post office. I am tinted decidedly green and my eyes look half closed. I look more like an extra on The Walking Dead than an international traveler. He claims the photo is a "fiction". All photos are. The photo's job is to say that "the person identified by this card looks like this" to an official looking at that card. If he modeled his head well and chose good render settings, it might be truer than a "real photo" in this regard.

jacquesm 9y ago
> He claims the photo is a "fiction". All photos are. That's not true. Your passport photo is supposed to be a snapshot of what you looked like in person at a certain point in time. It is the difference between a registration and a creation. The likely effect of actions like these is that eventually the passport office will take the photographs to avoid people playing games with the system (such as: replacing the eyes with the eyes of someone else or changing other details that might screw up the biometric passport requirements).
- fmoralesc 9y ago
  In Chile, where I'm from, the institution in charge of identity cards and passports effectively does this, and as far as I'm aware, always has. It doesn't sound weird to me.
- noonespecial 9y ago
  >Your passport photo is supposed to be a snapshot of what you looked like in person at a certain point in time. Then the photo the Post Office official took fails this test. My skin is not green and my hair is not black. They sure look that way in my passport photo. The likely effect is that my official "photo" will become an amalgamation of AI facial recognition scans at official checkpoints through time. Perhaps closer to this render than any single photo could be. That's the scary part. The machine will simply learn to recognize me on sight. The 4th Reich won't have to demand my papers, it will already know me by heart.
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    How is minor color distortion comparable to a completely artificial 3d rendering? In the past id photos were taken in completely black and white. But it was still a photograph of that person.
    - mynewtb 9y ago
      A photograph is a model of reality. This 3D render is a model of reality.
    - PeterisP 9y ago
      It matters how similar to reality the picture printed on ID looks because it determines the usefulness of this picture. The process how that picture was obtained doesn't necessarily change the usefulness - a really good pencil drawing may be more accurate and useful than an unlucky photography.
  - angry_octet 9y ago
    http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2017/video/s7682-tian-multi-task-learning-precise-object-search-massive-surveillance-videos.mp4 http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2017/video/s7682-tian-m... It's already here if you're a person of interest. Soon your passport photo will be a 3D scan of your face. Increases ability to recognize under different lighting conditions.
  - Maxious 9y ago
    Meanwhile in Australia... > Contactless technology will remove the need for eligible travellers to present a passport to verify their identity in automated immigration clearance. > The identity of a traveller will be confirmed on the basis of a unique biometric identifier, such as their facial image, instead of document based checks. The live facial image of the traveller at the SmartGate will be matched against an image previously verified as the unique identifier associated with that identity. > This verified image and others collected during subsequent travel, become the images used by the Department to confirm identity on future travel. http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fems%2Fr5751_ems_2fb75e14-e450-4d1c-9c16-e0c27f0913b0%22 http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w...
- raverbashing 9y ago
  No need to overcomplicate this: if the photo is obviously different from the person the document is not valid for its purpose Feel free to submit a photo that confuses the biometric requirements, hope you like the automated border gates rejecting your passport
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    I don't think anyone uses the photo for biometric identification. I thought those devices you look at in line simply take a photo of you on entry. In most countries you still face the customs officer who looks at you and your documents.
    - lazyasciiart 9y ago
      In Australia at least they do identify you at the smart gates for immigration. The customs officer doesn't look at visas or other immigration details.
      - jen729w 9y ago
        Nope. I left last week and will return on Monday and - just like entering the UK - can confirm that, while there are Customs staff hanging about to make sure nothing goes wrong, they are not individually monitoring each entry/exit. I find it bloody marvellous. I was on the Heathrow Express literally 20 minutes after getting off the plane from Melbourne. That's how it should be.
        lazyasciiart 9y ago
        Sorry, I meant "the smart gates are used as the only identification method". Poor wording.
    - pinum 9y ago
      eGates at UK airports do programmatically allow entry based solely on a facial recognition match between the person standing at the gate and the file on their passport's chip. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
- hashmal 9y ago
  this is actually an interesting subject and one should not jump on quick/easy answers. - is a photography really a snapshot of what something looks like? seems to be an easy one until you look closely at the history of technology behind photography - if photography is a faithful representation of something, does it mean there's not "creation" involved? how can photography be considered art if it's not creation? - "a passport photo is supposed to depict a snapshot of your face" and "all photos are fiction" are not mutually exclusive statements - and so on
  - JetSpiegel 9y ago
    Photography is an art, but passport photographs are not, they are all the same. The whole point is that they are standard.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Every single passport photo I got in china was "touched up" with photoshop to remove the background but also things like hair. This includes the photo I took for my USA passport renewal.
- throwaway_photo 9y ago
  > The likely effect of actions like these is that eventually the passport office will take the photographs That is the case in Hungary, where I'm from. I was surprised by this the last time I had a passport made. It came out looking good, I was just upset that I had had photos made before because the rules weren't communicated clearly. Other than that, I see no drawbacks.
  - falsedan 9y ago
    Loads of Eastern European countries have the passport photo taken by a passport official; the Latvian passports in our family have the best photos, and it nicely bypasses the silly 'provide evidence of your ability to form social bonds in the local community' requirement of UK-derived applications which want you to get a declaration of the true-and-accurate-likeliness of the photo signed on the back.
    - pinum 9y ago
      That's not quite right re. UK applications. Countersignatures are mainly intended to confirm a person's name/identity. They certify the photo too, but an adult who hasn't had a passport before needs to attend an interview where the photo will be checked and applicants who do have a previous passport will have the new photo checked against the record. I do think the countersignature system should be revisited, though.
- lloeki 9y ago
  There are legal requirements that are implemented as automated checks by photo booths here so that the photo is made sure to comply, so that official offices don't have to do so. The effect of this regulation is that the expression and lightning is so unnatural that the photo on my ID card only looks like me in a very uncanny way, very similar to that render. tl;dr: on my ID card I look like my digital psychopathic serial killer brother.
- kalleboo 9y ago
  In Sweden, applications for passports and ID cards are done at a machine that captures your photo, signature and fingerprint digitally and sends it off to manufacturing. These machines are distributed to post offices and embassies abroad.
- type0 9y ago
  > Your passport photo is supposed to be a snapshot of what you looked like in person at a certain point in time. It is the difference between a registration and a creation. This doesn't make any sense. Use a slightly wider or longer lens and you get vastly different pics, and we're not even talking about lighting or other aspects yet.
Benjammer 9y ago
>He claims the photo is a "fiction". All photos are. "Ceci n'est pas une pipe."
- bobwaycott 9y ago
  Ceci n'est pas une photo. :)
Mz 9y ago
To be fair, his "photo" looks a lot more like him than my passport photo looks like me. What on earth makes you assert this? Do you personally know the man?
- staz 9y ago
  There are photos of him on others parts of the website
  - Mz 9y ago
    I am not readily finding that. Can you provide links?
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  To add to this, where is the proof this isn't simply a photo. Where's the proof that the other photos of him on his website aren't fakes / also fakes / touched up. "Artists" have been known to perform stunts in this vein.
  - Mz 9y ago
    Yeah, I was discussing that with my son over lunch. Even if we have other photos of him on his own website, how is this some sort of objective evidence? I pulled out my new photo ID received days ago and showed my son the godawful photo on it. We had a good laugh about how it doesn't look like me at all. He could tell because he was looking at me right then while we talked. I stand by my idea that if you have not seen this person in person, you don't really know how representative it is. My ex husband consistently took hideous photos of me. My sister consistently took charming photos of me. Photos say as much about what is in the mind's eye of the photographer as they do about the subject -- and sometimes more. Your own passport or ID photos being particularly bad isn't actually relevant to the assertion that this is a good likeness of this man. How do any of us know this is a good likeness of him, other than just taking him at his word?
  - noonespecial 9y ago
    It is possible that this is a photo, made to look like a render made to look like a photo. The rabbit hole is deep when it comes to art!
pinum 9y ago
I'm surprised passport offices don't care more about photo quality. I submitted a reasonably clear photo with good contrast correct colour balance, and the image on my UK passport (both printed and on the chip) is blurry, washed out, and badly tinted yellow/green. I guess they scanned it in with crappy settings and didn't care enough to fix it.
- TheRealPomax 9y ago
  To be fair, if you see what they turn it into on the card itself, "quality" is not a selecting criterium. It's pretty much purely "contrast" and "framing" to make sure your entire face ends up on the fact, with enough contrast that a two-tone presentation still looks vaguely recognizable.

jacquesm 9y ago

> He claims the photo is a "fiction". All photos are. That's not true. Your passport photo is supposed to be a snapshot of what you looked like in person at a certain point in time. It is the difference between a registration and a creation. The likely effect of actions like these is that eventually the passport office will take the photographs to avoid people playing games with the system (such as: replacing the eyes with the eyes of someone else or changing other details that might screw up the biometric passport requirements).

fmoralesc 9y ago
In Chile, where I'm from, the institution in charge of identity cards and passports effectively does this, and as far as I'm aware, always has. It doesn't sound weird to me.
noonespecial 9y ago
>Your passport photo is supposed to be a snapshot of what you looked like in person at a certain point in time. Then the photo the Post Office official took fails this test. My skin is not green and my hair is not black. They sure look that way in my passport photo. The likely effect is that my official "photo" will become an amalgamation of AI facial recognition scans at official checkpoints through time. Perhaps closer to this render than any single photo could be. That's the scary part. The machine will simply learn to recognize me on sight. The 4th Reich won't have to demand my papers, it will already know me by heart.
- Houshalter 9y ago
  How is minor color distortion comparable to a completely artificial 3d rendering? In the past id photos were taken in completely black and white. But it was still a photograph of that person.
  - mynewtb 9y ago
    A photograph is a model of reality. This 3D render is a model of reality.
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    It matters how similar to reality the picture printed on ID looks because it determines the usefulness of this picture. The process how that picture was obtained doesn't necessarily change the usefulness - a really good pencil drawing may be more accurate and useful than an unlucky photography.
- angry_octet 9y ago
  http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2017/video/s7682-tian-multi-task-learning-precise-object-search-massive-surveillance-videos.mp4 http://on-demand.gputechconf.com/gtc/2017/video/s7682-tian-m... It's already here if you're a person of interest. Soon your passport photo will be a 3D scan of your face. Increases ability to recognize under different lighting conditions.
- Maxious 9y ago
  Meanwhile in Australia... > Contactless technology will remove the need for eligible travellers to present a passport to verify their identity in automated immigration clearance. > The identity of a traveller will be confirmed on the basis of a unique biometric identifier, such as their facial image, instead of document based checks. The live facial image of the traveller at the SmartGate will be matched against an image previously verified as the unique identifier associated with that identity. > This verified image and others collected during subsequent travel, become the images used by the Department to confirm identity on future travel. http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fems%2Fr5751_ems_2fb75e14-e450-4d1c-9c16-e0c27f0913b0%22 http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w...
raverbashing 9y ago
No need to overcomplicate this: if the photo is obviously different from the person the document is not valid for its purpose Feel free to submit a photo that confuses the biometric requirements, hope you like the automated border gates rejecting your passport
- djsumdog 9y ago
  I don't think anyone uses the photo for biometric identification. I thought those devices you look at in line simply take a photo of you on entry. In most countries you still face the customs officer who looks at you and your documents.
  - lazyasciiart 9y ago
    In Australia at least they do identify you at the smart gates for immigration. The customs officer doesn't look at visas or other immigration details.
    - jen729w 9y ago
      Nope. I left last week and will return on Monday and - just like entering the UK - can confirm that, while there are Customs staff hanging about to make sure nothing goes wrong, they are not individually monitoring each entry/exit. I find it bloody marvellous. I was on the Heathrow Express literally 20 minutes after getting off the plane from Melbourne. That's how it should be.
      - lazyasciiart 9y ago
        Sorry, I meant "the smart gates are used as the only identification method". Poor wording.
  - pinum 9y ago
    eGates at UK airports do programmatically allow entry based solely on a facial recognition match between the person standing at the gate and the file on their passport's chip. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
hashmal 9y ago
this is actually an interesting subject and one should not jump on quick/easy answers. - is a photography really a snapshot of what something looks like? seems to be an easy one until you look closely at the history of technology behind photography - if photography is a faithful representation of something, does it mean there's not "creation" involved? how can photography be considered art if it's not creation? - "a passport photo is supposed to depict a snapshot of your face" and "all photos are fiction" are not mutually exclusive statements - and so on
- JetSpiegel 9y ago
  Photography is an art, but passport photographs are not, they are all the same. The whole point is that they are standard.
seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Every single passport photo I got in china was "touched up" with photoshop to remove the background but also things like hair. This includes the photo I took for my USA passport renewal.
throwaway_photo 9y ago
> The likely effect of actions like these is that eventually the passport office will take the photographs That is the case in Hungary, where I'm from. I was surprised by this the last time I had a passport made. It came out looking good, I was just upset that I had had photos made before because the rules weren't communicated clearly. Other than that, I see no drawbacks.
- falsedan 9y ago
  Loads of Eastern European countries have the passport photo taken by a passport official; the Latvian passports in our family have the best photos, and it nicely bypasses the silly 'provide evidence of your ability to form social bonds in the local community' requirement of UK-derived applications which want you to get a declaration of the true-and-accurate-likeliness of the photo signed on the back.
  - pinum 9y ago
    That's not quite right re. UK applications. Countersignatures are mainly intended to confirm a person's name/identity. They certify the photo too, but an adult who hasn't had a passport before needs to attend an interview where the photo will be checked and applicants who do have a previous passport will have the new photo checked against the record. I do think the countersignature system should be revisited, though.
lloeki 9y ago
There are legal requirements that are implemented as automated checks by photo booths here so that the photo is made sure to comply, so that official offices don't have to do so. The effect of this regulation is that the expression and lightning is so unnatural that the photo on my ID card only looks like me in a very uncanny way, very similar to that render. tl;dr: on my ID card I look like my digital psychopathic serial killer brother.
kalleboo 9y ago
In Sweden, applications for passports and ID cards are done at a machine that captures your photo, signature and fingerprint digitally and sends it off to manufacturing. These machines are distributed to post offices and embassies abroad.
type0 9y ago
> Your passport photo is supposed to be a snapshot of what you looked like in person at a certain point in time. It is the difference between a registration and a creation. This doesn't make any sense. Use a slightly wider or longer lens and you get vastly different pics, and we're not even talking about lighting or other aspects yet.

Benjammer 9y ago

>He claims the photo is a "fiction". All photos are. "Ceci n'est pas une pipe."

bobwaycott 9y ago
Ceci n'est pas une photo. :)

Mz 9y ago

To be fair, his "photo" looks a lot more like him than my passport photo looks like me. What on earth makes you assert this? Do you personally know the man?

staz 9y ago
There are photos of him on others parts of the website
- Mz 9y ago
  I am not readily finding that. Can you provide links?
TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
To add to this, where is the proof this isn't simply a photo. Where's the proof that the other photos of him on his website aren't fakes / also fakes / touched up. "Artists" have been known to perform stunts in this vein.
- Mz 9y ago
  Yeah, I was discussing that with my son over lunch. Even if we have other photos of him on his own website, how is this some sort of objective evidence? I pulled out my new photo ID received days ago and showed my son the godawful photo on it. We had a good laugh about how it doesn't look like me at all. He could tell because he was looking at me right then while we talked. I stand by my idea that if you have not seen this person in person, you don't really know how representative it is. My ex husband consistently took hideous photos of me. My sister consistently took charming photos of me. Photos say as much about what is in the mind's eye of the photographer as they do about the subject -- and sometimes more. Your own passport or ID photos being particularly bad isn't actually relevant to the assertion that this is a good likeness of this man. How do any of us know this is a good likeness of him, other than just taking him at his word?
- noonespecial 9y ago
  It is possible that this is a photo, made to look like a render made to look like a photo. The rabbit hole is deep when it comes to art!

pinum 9y ago

I'm surprised passport offices don't care more about photo quality. I submitted a reasonably clear photo with good contrast correct colour balance, and the image on my UK passport (both printed and on the chip) is blurry, washed out, and badly tinted yellow/green. I guess they scanned it in with crappy settings and didn't care enough to fix it.

TheRealPomax 9y ago
To be fair, if you see what they turn it into on the card itself, "quality" is not a selecting criterium. It's pretty much purely "contrast" and "framing" to make sure your entire face ends up on the fact, with enough contrast that a two-tone presentation still looks vaguely recognizable.