Make Russia Visa Photo

Most visa guidance gives you millimetres. Russia's unified e-visa does something different: the portal says the photo must be rectangular with a 35x45 aspect ratio, and that your face must take up 70 to 80 percent of it.

That is a considered choice rather than an omission. The e-visa is submitted as a file, never printed by you, so absolute size means nothing — what matters is the shape of the crop and how much of it your face occupies.

The two figures agree with the familiar passport-photo geometry. A 32-36mm head on a 45mm-tall frame is 71-80% of the height, which is why a correctly cropped Schengen-style photo generally satisfies this rule already.

The photo has to show the top of your head and the top of your shoulders, with your head centred and shown fully from the top of the hairline or the crown down to the tip of the chin. The nose should sit on the line of symmetry.

You must be alone in the photo, with no foreign objects visible — the guidance names chair backs and pictures on the walls specifically, which tells you what gets submitted often enough to be worth naming.

No frames or borders. A photo printed with a decorative edge or exported from an app that adds one will fail on that alone.

The background must be plain and light-coloured with no shadows. Note the wording — light-coloured, not specifically white, so a pale grey or cream wall is within the rule.

Lighting must be uniform, with no shadows on the face, no flash reflections and no red eye. The colour scheme should be neutral and show natural skin tone, and the image must be clear, well defined and in focus.

The photo must be no more than six months old and must reflect your current appearance.

Glasses are permitted as long as your eyes are clearly visible. Tinted lenses and flash reflections off the lenses are not allowed, and the guidance suggests lighter frames over heavy ones — the frames must not cover your eyes even partly.

Applicants whose religious beliefs prohibit them from being seen with their heads uncovered may wear a head covering, provided it does not conceal facial features and your face stays clearly visible from the bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead.

The pose itself is standard: full-face view, head neither tilted nor turned, looking directly at the camera with a neutral expression, mouth closed, eyes open and no hair across them.