Photo tips for better results?

Yeah, the lighting thing is a game changer. I’d also add—make sure you're checking the actual image file, not just how it looks on your camera screen. A bad barcode is dead weight if you drop the ball on the photo. Even if the face looks solid, data parsing errors can throw a red flag on the backend. So focus on even lighting, but don’t forget the finer details. It all has to work together.

Also clean your camera lens! Sounds obvious but people forget

Use a plain white or light gray wall as background. Makes a huge difference

These are great, thanks everyone. Will try again this weekend

Make sure nothing casts a shadow on your face. Face the light source directly

Yeah, this is honestly one of those things that took me way too long to figure out when I was starting out. I kept getting photos back that looked totally washed out, or worse, had those nasty hard shadows across the face that make the whole ID look kinda questionable. You know the look—half your face is blown out from a desk lamp, the other half is in shadow, or everything has this weird orange color cast from room lighting. It's an instant rejection if you're sending it off, or just a bad look if you're doing it yourself.

I tried messing around with different setups. Overhead ceiling lights? Terrible shadows under the eyes and chin. Direct camera flash? Red-eye and shiny forehead city, honestly. Taking it outside in direct sunlight? Squinting and harsh contrast—awful. The troubleshooting process was basically just trial and error of "what makes this look like a mugshot from a bad movie."

The user above totally nailed the fix though. Natural daylight is king, but the "not in direct sunlight" part is the secret sauce. You want to stand a few feet back from a large window. What you're looking for is that big, soft light source. Think of the window like a giant softbox. Direct sunlight is a tiny, harsh spotlight. Cloudy sky or shaded window light is a massive diffused source. It wraps around the face evenly, gives you accurate skin tones, and kills those weird shadows that scream "novice photo." I usually set up facing a window in the late morning or early afternoon, about 3-4 feet away, and make sure the light is hitting me straight on or at a very slight angle.

For prevention advice going forward, watch out for mixed lighting. If you're using window light, turn off any overhead lights or lamps in the room. Mixing daylight with warm indoor bulbs confuses the hell out of the camera's white balance and makes the photo look unnatural, even if you try to edit it later. Also, skip the phone flash entirely—red-eye and weird reflections if you wear glasses are just not worth it. Once I switched to this window lighting method and ditched the room lights, my photo quality jumped massively. It's the best free upgrade you can make to your setup. Just find the biggest window in your place and use it.