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Questions about DV Lottery 2015 photo requirements

A

america101

Registered Users (C)
Hi everyone,

I have entered once before but was unsuccessful. But I just wanted to ask some things about the photo requirements. Does the photo have to be "professionally" done... the examples on the internet appear to have an extremely white background and appear to have professional lighting; but for my application last year I took the photo against the wall in my house and it is close to white, but a little creamier/more yellow. You know "wall colour". Is this okay? I plan to do it against the wall this time too if im told it doesn't have to be "professional" ...

I don't know how it works but I heard it involves facial recognition technology, so would creamier background as opposed to pure/bright white cause problems because the creamy might have not enough of a contrast with my skin, because I am Caucasian. Does any of this matter? I will also be wearing black shirt if that makes any difference.

Can you please tell me if you just do it yourself at home and if that is okay? I don't know if thats the most common way or not. Any winners do it this way? Just want to make sure I do it 100% right and put my mind at ease.

Thank you for any advice :)
 
As long as it's light coloured it will be fine. That's exactly the way we did ours, our wall is also kind of creamy, and we got selected.
 
SusieQQQ said:
As long as it's light coloured it will be fine. That's exactly the way we did ours, our wall is also kind of creamy, and we got selected.
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I think the colour that you are referring to might be "magnolia". I had my photo taken against a wall of that colour last year and got selected so it's fine. As long as pixel resolution, head size and the JPG (JPEG) file size are good you will be ok.
 
My photo wasn't professionally done. I used daylight, room lighting, and the off-white / creamy wall as the background. It was taken with my iphone 4S then cropped with the DOS online photo tool. I wasn't going to spend $30 to get a professional photo done just to enter a lottery, any lottery. Since I got the GC, that photo must have been good enough.
 
I've always submitted digital photos that I took, and I'm no professional. I looked back at our DV2013 photos and the background is a light tan and I was wearing a black t-shirt. The main thing is to avoid patterned or busy backgrounds, and deep shadows. When you use a flash, you can sometimes get a bad shadow behind you, so stand more forward of the wall.

Don't worry, and good luck.
 
For what it's worth, my DV 2013 photo shows a slight shadow of my head in the background.
 
Thank you very much everyone for you advice. I will take the picture at home against the wall.

Also, would someone please be able to help me out on this? On the instructions and in various places it mentions about maintaining the same "aspect ratio" for the photograph when getting it to the right size. Obviously, the photograph is not already square when you take it, so it is unavoidable to change the aspect ratio... Does anyone know anything about this?

Did you guys take the actual picture of just the head and shoulders or take a longer picture and then crop it. Because if you take it of just the head and shoulders and then try to just drag the corners down to 600x600 pixels you kind of lose the clarity and high resolution look of the photo and it looks pixelated. But if you take it a bit longer length and then use a cropper, it just zooms in itself and I think it looks a bit clearer that way? Please can you advise me on this too. Thank you very much :)
 
america101 said:
Thank you very much everyone for you advice. I will take the picture at home against the wall.

Also, would someone please be able to help me out on this? On the instructions and in various places it mentions about maintaining the same "aspect ratio" for the photograph when getting it to the right size. Obviously, the photograph is not already square when you take it, so it is unavoidable to change the aspect ratio... Does anyone know anything about this?

Did you guys take the actual picture of just the head and shoulders or take a longer picture and then crop it. Because if you take it of just the head and shoulders and then try to just drag the corners down to 600x600 pixels you kind of lose the clarity and high resolution look of the photo and it looks pixelated. But if you take it a bit longer length and then use a cropper, it just zooms in itself and I think it looks a bit clearer that way? Please can you advise me on this too. Thank you very much :)
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Maintaining the aspect ratio means not to stretch the photo one way only so that you end up with a wide head, or a skinny one. Both width and height need to be resized together - to keep the photo in proportion.

I took a wider shot of us - not close-ups. Then I cropped the part of the photo I wanted, as a perfect square, then resized it to 600x600. I hope I explained that well enough. Good luck.
 
hello sir. .. i m the winner of dv 2015 .. i have a problem.. my photo which i uploade.. has sky blue backgroud .. does it disqualified me for getting visa?
 
Niss aan said:
hello sir. .. i m the winner of dv 2015 .. i have a problem.. my photo which i uploade.. has sky blue backgroud .. does it disqualified me for getting visa?
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Stop asking the same question that you have had answered already by a bunch of people on FB and by me directly!
 
Hallo!i have a friend who isnt in the forum and she wants to know if she will be disqualified as she used the same photo for dv2014 though she made some minor adjustment?she is a dv2015selectee.thanks
 
liskubs said:
Hallo!i have a friend who isnt in the forum and she wants to know if she will be disqualified as she used the same photo for dv2014 though she made some minor adjustment?she is a dv2015selectee.thanks
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Silly risk to take, but she will probably be ok.
 
liskubs said:
Hallo!i have a friend who isnt in the forum and she wants to know if she will be disqualified as she used the same photo for dv2014 though she made some minor adjustment?she is a dv2015selectee.thanks
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What 'minor adjustments' ?
 
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