Cambodia eVisa Rejected for a Photo That Is Too Bright — Aussie Fix Walkthrough

The re-shoot — 5 minutes in any Aussie home

The cleanest re-shoot uses soft natural light from a north-facing window, no flash, no overhead lights, and a sheet of plain A4 paper as a cheap reflector. You do not need a chemist, you do not need a professional camera, and you do not need to leave the house. Here is the exact setup, broken into the four things that matter.

• Wall: stand 50 cm from a plain white or off-white interior wall, with no door frames, picture rails or light switches in the frame behind your head.
• Light: face a north-facing window (in the southern hemisphere a north-facing window gives the softest, most even daylight for most of the day). The light should hit your face from the front and sides, not from behind you.
• Reflector: have a partner or friend hold a sheet of plain white A4 paper at chest height, angled up towards your face. This bounces a little of the window light back into the shadow side of your face and balances the exposure.
• Camera: phone in portrait mode, no flash, no portrait blur mode (Cambodian Immigration auto-rejects portrait-mode blur because it softens the face), held at the same height as your eyes, 1.5-2 metres away.

The three common Aussie mistakes that bounce a re-shoot

Flash. The single most common cause of a too-bright bounce is the camera flash firing automatically because the room felt dim to the camera even though it felt fine to the eye. Turn the flash off manually before the shot — Auto is not enough. On iPhone, tap the flash icon at the top of the camera and set it to Off. On Android, tap the flash icon on the camera screen and select Off.

Backlight. If you stand with your back to a window, the bright daylight behind your head fools the camera's metering and the face goes dark while the background goes pure white. Always face the window, not stand in front of it. The window goes behind the photographer, not behind you.

White on white. If you are wearing a white T-shirt and the wall behind you is also white, the auto-checker sometimes flags the photo because it cannot find an edge between you and the background. Wear a coloured top — pale blue, light grey, soft pink, anything that is not white. The fix is one wardrobe change, not a re-edit.

The edit path — when re-shooting is not an option

Sometimes you cannot re-shoot. The flight is in 48 hours, you are away from home, the natural-light window has passed, or the room you are in simply does not have a clean wall. In those cases, the next-best option is a non-destructive edit on the existing photo. Both iOS Photos and Google Photos handle this well — the goal is to bring the highlights down by 30-50 points so the histogram pulls back from the right edge.

Editing in iOS Photos

Duplicate the original first so you have a clean copy to fall back on — tap Share, then Duplicate. Open the duplicate. Tap Edit, then the adjust icon. Find the Highlights slider (it sits between Exposure and Brilliance). Drag it left until the histogram pulls back from the right edge — usually -30 to -50 does it. If the face starts to look grey, lift the Brilliance slider by +10 to bring back the warmth. Save. Re-export as JPEG under 2 MB.

Editing in Google Photos

Open the photo. Tap Edit, then Light. Tap More to expose the detail sliders. Drag Highlights left by 30-50 points, watching the histogram pull back from the right edge. If the photo starts to look flat, lift the Brightness slider by +5 to compensate. Save as a copy so the original is preserved. Re-export as JPEG under 2 MB.

Resubmission — replying to the bounce email and getting back on track

Once you have the corrected photo — re-shot or edited — the resubmission is a single email. Through us, the fix path is built into the all-in price you saw at checkout, so there is no second charge and no fresh application to fill out. Here is the exact sequence.

• Step 1: open the bounce email from us. Plain English, points at the brightness issue, suggests the re-shoot setup or the edit slider movements.
• Step 2: re-shoot or edit using the steps above. Save as a JPEG, ideally 600 by 600 pixels or larger, under 2 MB.
• Step 3: reply to the email with the new photo attached. No fresh form, no new payment, no re-uploading from scratch.
• Step 4: we check the new photo against the brightness spec on our end before resubmitting — Checked end-to-end before it reaches Immigration. If anything still looks marginal, we tell you on the same email thread.
• Step 5: approved PDF lands in your inbox, Delivered as a printable PDF by email. Typical end-to-end timeline from bounce to approved PDF is 1-2 business days for a photo-only fix.

The Cambodia eVisa resubmission guide for Australians covers the same flow written for any rejection cause, not just photos — worth a glance if you want the wider context. The Cambodia eVisa cost guide for Aussies breaks down where each dollar of the $80 USD (~$122 AUD) tourist or $90 USD (~$137 AUD) business price goes, including the free-resubmission line.

Putting it all together for Aussie travellers

An overexposed-photo bounce is one of the most fixable rejection causes — five minutes by a north-facing window, a sheet of paper as a reflector, no flash, coloured top, and the file goes back through Cambodian Immigration on the original payment. If you have not applied yet, the Australian eVisa application walkthrough covers the upload flow in full and flags the photo step explicitly. If you have been bounced, the email in your inbox already has the specific brightness flag — replying with the corrected file is the entire fix, and Aussie-timezone support is on the same thread if anything is unclear.

Next steps and related reading for Australians: apply for your Cambodia eVisa when you are ready to lodge, bookmark our Cambodia visa hub for Australian citizens as the single canonical reference, skim the FAQ on Cambodia visa documents for quick answers, and use our glossary of Cambodia visa terms to decode any acronym in this guide.