With us you will find the ideal photo frame for your passport photos
You want to frame a single or several passport photos or a complete photo box strip? Then you are right here.
Passport photos: not only for the passport, now also for the picture frame
Not all passport photos are the same. Some people think of biometrics and passports, but more on that below. We think however - so completely among us - rather at:
4 passport photos for 3 €. All purely there. Cabin much too narrow, no matter, and somehow the curtain is also broken every time, and boah is that hot. How, that flashes just like that? I wasn't ready yet. The chair is really weird. Can you make it higher? Bam, the next flash. And the knee in the ribs and hair in the mouth.
And then, at some point, there are a dozen of these passport photos in front of you, some strips cut up and dissected, with creases and edges, others still whole. And you think: that really doesn't help anyone, a whole life in a shoebox. And you ask yourself: are there actually picture frames for this? For passport photos from the photo booth?
Yes, there are.
What format do passport photo strips actually have - and the matching photo frames?
The common photo boxes expose their passport photos as strips in the average format of about 40 x 203 mm. This does not fit into any common format of photo frames. Since the paper for the passport photos comes from the roll, the width remains constant, only the length varies here and there by 1 - 2 mm. But that should not bother us any further. In Berlin, where Modulor is at home, there have been many of these machines scattered throughout the city for several years. Not only drunken friends, lovers holding hands and children with their families love them. Sooner or later, everyone has stood in front of one of these magic booths at just the right moment and known: now it's going to happen! Kairos is its name, the favorable moment, and is the wild brother of Chronos, the continuous time.
Because for us these darned strips and these nights and these moments totally belong to Berlin and we love them, just like picture frames - there are feelings in them - we have developed a very special, own format for picture frames for the classic vending machine passport photos, passport photo strips, photobooth strips, or whatever you want to call them: 8 x 24 cm.
This dimension is available with Moritz P, our object picture frame made of wood, which also gladly accommodates Polaroids in the 12 x 14 cm format and many others, and with Anita B, the picture frame made of extravagant aluminum.
Photobox, Photobooth & Co: complete passport photo strip framing with Moritz P and Anita B
Most of us now automatically think of passport photos as the complete strips from the Photobooth, which you take completely without any Perso intentions for only one reason: because they are fun! With our metal-colored picture frame Anita B you give your passport photo strips from the Photobooth a noble frame. The object frame Moritz P also offers you all kinds of possibilities to stage the photo booth strip in the picture frame due to its distance bar. How to do this, you can read in our tips:
a) Create a depth effect with a little Kapa: The passport photos float on a narrow strip of Kapa with a freely selected, colored background made of a material of your choice.
b) with an optional passe-partout: The passe-partout does not lie on the passport photos and does not cover anything. Instead, it frames the photo strip with a 1.5 mm border all around and gives you the choice of creating a fine, visible outline with a colored background cardboard. Our Kurator ready-made mounts are cropped mounts, so don't be surprised that their cropping is minimally larger than the passport photo strip. For very small images like passport photos, this is a great way to prevent losing too much image area.
c) With a passepartout BEFORE the spacer bar: As in b), the passport photos are located BEHIND the spacer bar. This creates a small peephole in which you can also make only parts of the passport photos or only one passport photo visible by selecting the passepartout section, while others remain hidden.
d) The spacer bar of the object frame offers you a 10 mm deep space in which small things, souvenirs, nonsensical as well as sensible things that belong to the passport pictures for secret reasons can be attached. The bar has the same color as the picture frame - but can easily be colored to bring more color into play.
e) Our extra tip: Frame the spine of a book!
The spine of your favorite book, which is already falling apart from hard reading, you can give instead of passport photos also 1A in the 8 x 24 cm picture frame a new home.
Quite classic: the passport photo for the passport - format, aspect ratio and matching frames
For individual passport photos, which the Citizen's Office requests every few years for its poetry album, we will now finally proceed quite systematically: what is the actual format of the classic passport photo for which we are looking for a picture frame? The legislator has quite clearly prescribed 3.5 x 4.5 cm here. This corresponds almost exactly to the aspect ratio 4:3. Has the biometric set of 4 for the passport become surprisingly good? That's something to celebrate!
Framing passport photos in oval and mini frames
If you want to frame passport photos in the classic 3.5 x 4.5 cm format, our mini frames and our round and oval frames fit perfectly! The smallest of our mini frames start at 5 x 5 cm and continue with 5 x 7 cm (perfect for passport photos with a narrow border) and 6 x 9 cm. Round frames are available from 8 cm diameter and oval frames from 7 x 9 cm. So here you can either crop the passport photo to a small square or frame it perfectly with a little border or passe-partout around it without trimming. And give it to grandma (you could call her again anyway).
Our tip
If you don't have a framer nearby who can make you a suitable passepartout for your passport photo, e.g. for a chic, walnut-brown oval frame, no problem! Passport photos, especially those for official ID cards, are usually not printed in a high-gloss finish, but on semi-gloss photo paper, so that you can put the glass directly on your passport photo in the frame without a passe-partout, as an exception, without creating so-called Newtonian rings. It's best to choose a great background material that either matches the frame and passport photo perfectly in color - or not at all and brushes the framing against the grain. Staple the passport photo to the oval-cut cardboard or textile or a piece of old wallpaper or vegetable bag from the health food store - be inventive! - and you're done. Here's another little trick: You can easily use the glass of the picture frame as a template for the background cardboard.
Last but not least: a passport photo can also be wonderfully epic in a much larger, seemingly inappropriately large, frame.
Framing passport photos with objects
If you want to stage your single passport photo a little more dramatically in a picture frame, or perhaps add a small souvenir or object to the passport photo, you can of course frame it in a Moritz P or Anita B just as well - and experiment with the extra space and positioning of the passport photo. Or add something handwritten, or or or....
What was biometrics again? What is to be considered? Tips for 1A passport photos from us for you - without guarantee
Your face "must" - ugly word, but we can't get around it now - be centered in the biometric passport photo and look straight into the camera from open eyes, filling about 75% of the passport photo. Laughter is not in the passport photo - the mouth must be closed, and smiling is not possible either, so just think about nothing at all for a moment and look completely neutral. The passport photo as such must be well lit and contrasty as well as well resolved, furthermore free of additional objects and unfortunately the hair must not hang in the face or cast a shadow. Color casts or disturbances in the passport picture are also not allowed. Those who wish to wear headgear need good, religious reasons for doing so. The ideal background for passport photos is bright and, of course, free of patterns. Oh, and "natural" skin tones are desired - whatever that may be now.
We think: the passport photos we pull out of the vending machine at night after one too many beers at Kotti are by far more fun.