Eyes With A Face

The new Philippine passport — the red one — requires your photo against a background in a specific shade of blue. My current passport expires in eight months; since many embassies issuing visas require passports valid for at least six months, and I am a neurotic, I decided to get a new passport way ahead of the expiration date.

Friends have assured me that getting the passport renewed is a lot more convenient than it used to be. You go to the official website, check the requirements, and fill out the form. Then you call the courier service to pick up the requirements from you personally. After a few days the passport office contacts you for the date and time of your appointment. You have to make a personal appearance at the Department of Foreign Affairs on Roxas Boulevard — it’s a short queue. Voila! you have your papers. I love how old Hollywood movies refer to your official proof of identity as “Your papers.”

It’s easy enough to take your own photograph these days — phone cameras, digital cameras, the Photo Booth application, and so on. However, you’re going to have to live with that passport photo for several years, so it’s best to have it snapped by someone who knows what she’s doing. Plus it has to meet all the DFA requirements: royal blue background, ears showing, shirt with collar, etc. Having my picture taken is traumatic enough — “Aaaaah! What is that!!” — but the official photo has to be without eyeglasses. I cannot recognize myself without glasses. In the photos that I like, I’m always wearing glasses. Happy are those who post their photos on Facebook and all over the web with impunity. (By the way, Ambeth Ocampo says there are 19 Jessica Zafras on Facebook. I assure you that none of them are me).

For my passport photos five years ago I went to a photo supply store in Greenbelt 1. You sat on a stool in the backroom, a photographer took snaps, and you claimed them an hour later. That particular store is gone. While walking past Landmark in Glorietta, I noticed one of the few remaining Foto-Me instant-photos-while-you-wait booths in the city. I peeked at the photos a customer had just claimed, and they looked all right. Four passport-size pictures cost P80.

Do you remember what the instant photo booths were like? A dark curtain and three walls, one of them a mirror. Behind the mirror was a camera. You grimaced at the mirror, and the camera shot you. Well, the mirror was gone, and in its place was a woman with a digital camera.

I’m not kidding.

She told me to sit on the stool. “Passport size?” she asked.

“Yes, for my passport,” I said.

“Oh.” She went inside the booth and futzed with a wire strung up like a short clothesline behind the stool. It held rolled-up curtains, red and blue. She pulled down the blue curtain.

Then she returned to her camera. “But you’re wearing black,” she said.

“Oops, are we supposed to be wearing white in the photo?” I asked.

“No,” she said. She snapped the photo, then looked at the result. I assumed she was surprised at the size of my head. Well, it is a very large head. If you need a contestant for a Big Head contest, I’m your ringer. “Ang laki ng ulo mo” is not an insult to me, but a statement of fact. It is not just the volume of hair that makes it huge; I measured the circumference at eyebrow-level, and my head is two feet around. No wonder I can’t find a hat that fits; my head should be wearing pants.

“Your ears have to be showing in the photo,” the Foto-Me operator pointed out.

“But I pulled my hair back,” I said. My hair was neatly trapped in a giant clip, exposing my ears. The head may be ginormous, but the ears are nicely-shaped and are flat against the sides of the head, not sticking out like Mickey Mouse’s. I can’t help it if they’re not saying “Hello!” from the front.

The operator shrugged and took another shot. “Okay,” she said. I should’ve asked to look at the camera’s screen, but I just wanted to get the picture-taking over with. A couple of minutes later I handed over my money and she produced a small envelope containing the photos.

I took them out, glanced at them, and quickly stuffed them back in the envelope before they could endanger innocent passersby.

It turns out that there was a reason she’d remarked on my black shirt against the blue backdrop. The automatic flash of the camera compensated for the darkness in the booth. As a result, the flash was right in my face, washing out my features. I called to mind that old horror movie turned Billy Idol song, Eyes Without A Face.

The moral of this story is: If you’re going to have a photo taken against a blue backdrop at an instant photo booth, don’t wear black.

Even assuming that I could submit a flash of white with eyes and hair on top as my photo (and subsequently cause consternation among immigration officials worldwide), do I want to look at that photo for the next several years? I think not. However, I did have the urge to dig up my ancient Billy Idol album.

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