Mugshot

I had to get a picture taken for my passport and identity card yesterday. Under the new laws it is strictly forbidden to look good or actually anything like yourself in the pic that you will have to show airport officials for the next 10 years.

I know, no-one looks good in those pics and I think the result could have been worse, but in a way it is insulting! The lighting is sooo bad on purpose, that your skin looks absolutely horrific.

I was assured by the miaudonna that these pics are simply bad whoever takes them, but maybe I should have gone somewhere else than I did.

I wanted to go to a proper studio to get them taken, but then shortly before I left the house my Mom called and so I ended up being very late for a meeting with friends to stalk my german celebrity boyfriend on screen at the almost local cinema. I originally wanted to take the pics at a studio close to the cinema but then I was so late that I decided to just get the pictures done in the first shop I saw.

So before I got on the underground I popped into this local shop (Porst) and I should have been warned by the "atmosphere". It wasn't even a studio. It was basically a place for people to drop off their films or cds to get their pics developed. Although they try to make naive people believe they can take pictures by having 6 horribly assorted portrait pics of spotty teenagers and little kids on their wall. They couldn't trick me though, the facilities clearly showed they hadn't taken proper pictures for years (no space, no backgrounds)... and that the guy was photoshopping stuff on a computer was just pretending of the worst kind, I can do that.

So yeah, I could have gone to a better place ... he took 2 pics while I was sitting on a chair in a tiny open corridore kinda thing with white walls. Meanwhile the shop door was open and everyone could see me getting my picture taken. I then asked him whether I could look at the pics before he printed them and when he looked at me suspiciously, I thought I'd play a bit dumb to make him comply "I mean is that possible? Digitally?" ... he nodded and let me choose. Actually we agreed... the first one was really bad and the second slightly less bad.

I paid 7,95 Euro, which is a good deal and now I am in the proud possession of a passport picture that overwhelmingly reminds me of Lindsay Lohan's and Mischa Barton's mugshots. Bad light... very bad light ... I might not look as if I've partied all night, but I definitly look like I've just committed a "Driving Under the Influence"-offence...

Well, it could have been worse though.

Now there's hoping that the council won't send me back to take a new picture coz my "pretty" mugshot is not correct. My eyes are free, but my hair covers my forehead a bit and I was told by a friend that she had to put all her hair out of her face for the pic. Great, if I have to do that, I will look like Britney when she got stretchered off to the hospital ... no, no, no!!!
So fingers crossed!