Visa Photos -- DIY?

If you can see that some Walgreen's greenhorn assistant doesn't seem to be familiar with requirements, leave the store and go to the next one.

Also, arm yourself with the requirements for your visa/passport/country so that you know just by looking at the results yourself in the store, that it may need to be redone. And they will usually re-do something if you point out that it's not going to work. When I had my passport renewal photos done at Walgreens, she did it over twice at no extra cost because she herself noticed that the first set was in some way not conforming to the computerized settings/requirement parameters. The technology is very good and as long as the store clerk is not completely incompetent, they should be able to comply with whatever you need -- US or UK standards. It's all in their system and the picture they take gets put through their machine and checked against the parameters for head size etc.

There is no need to leave the store with photos that don't match the requirements as long as at least one person knows what they are, and if that can be you then all the better.

If you can see that some Walgreen's greenhorn assistant doesn't seem to be familiar with requirements, leave the store and go to the next one... The technology is very good and as long as the store clerk is not completely incompetent, they should be able to comply with whatever you need.

That is exactly what I did. I left our Walgreens, which is evidently staffed by people who don't know what they are doing. Of course, not every Walgreens is the same.

But with a 5 year old and a 2 year in hand each time I go anywhere, it made more sense for me to go somewhere else where I *knew* I'd get good service, rather than going back to the original store that messed it up.

That's all I'm saying. I figured it was worth posting a bad Walgreens experience in addition to the good ones, just so the Original Poster had a little more info to go on.

Yeah, it's like Snappy Snaps in the UK. Sometimes you get someone who knows what they're doing, other times, not so much. Even when a manager is there.

I think it depends largely on the operator, ours clearly had no clue what they were doing.

This same thing happened to me here in the UK when I was having my US passport photos done at the popular chain snappy snaps.

I'd say you need to check the photos yourself to make sure they match the requirements. In that light, your friend could probably take them for you as long as they were printed professionally and matched the requirements...

Thanks for all the feedback -- in the end we used Walgreens, and they look fine.