Online Dating Profile Photo Tips

Your photo does more work than anything else on your profile. People look at it before they have read a single word you have written, and a profile with a photo is likely to get around 90% more interest than one without. The good news is that a decent one takes about five minutes, and the camera on your phone is better than anything the professionals had thirty years ago. Here is how to get one you do not mind other people seeing.

1. Say Cheese!

Smile. That is the whole tip, and it is the one that makes the biggest difference, with smiling photos likely to get around twice as many messages as unsmiling ones. A lot of us default to the face we use for the photo on our ID, which is a look that says "get this over with" rather than "I would be good company on a Sunday". Nobody is scrolling through hoping to find somebody who looks fed up. If you cannot smile on cue, and plenty of us cannot, get whoever is holding the camera to say something daft just before they press the button. The half second after a laugh is where the good photo lives.

2. Location, Location, Location

Get out of the dark corner and into the light. A well lit photo somewhere pleasant beats a gloomy one every time, and it gives people something to ask you about. Some of our members have set the bar high with pictures from the Kruger and the Garden Route. The rest of us do not need to go anywhere. The stoep, the garden, a park, the promenade, outside on an ordinary morning. Any of it works. If you are indoors, sit facing a window in daylight, because soft light coming at you from the front is the most flattering light there is and it costs nothing. What you want to avoid is the overhead bulb at night, which puts shadows in all the wrong places, and the bathroom mirror photo, which nobody has ever been improved by. One more thing: check what is behind you before you take it, so you are not showing your street name or your number plate.

3. Composition

Put yourself in the middle of the frame. Dating sites crop photos automatically to fit different parts of the page, and the crop always comes off the edges, so anybody lurking in a corner risks losing an ear. Head and shoulders, or head to waist, with a bit of room around you. One more thing worth knowing: hold the phone slightly above eye level and look up at it a touch. Shooting from below is how you end up with three chins you did not know you had. Every teenager alive worked this out years ago and there is no reason to let them keep it to themselves.

4. "Which one is you?"

Your favourite photo is probably one with other people in it, because that is when we are at our most relaxed. The trouble is that a stranger has no idea which one you are, and "sorry, are you the one on the left?" is not the message you were hoping for. Save the group photos for later in your gallery, and be a bit careful about pictures of the grandchildren, which are better kept off a public profile altogether. It is also worth leaving out photos with an ex, or with a late husband or wife. That is not about pretending your life did not happen. It is simply a lot to hand somebody in the first three seconds, before you have had the chance to tell them about it yourself.

5. The Professional Job

We have noticed more properly shot photos turning up on the site, taken by an actual photographer either in a studio or at home. They do look good, and they are not always as expensive as you would expect. One of our members found a cleverer way round the cost. He suggested to his son that the family really ought to get some proper photos done together, seeing as it had been years. The family got their portraits, he got his profile picture, and he did not pay a cent. Two birds, one stone. If a photographer is not on the cards, ask one of the grandchildren. They have been taking photos of themselves since they could hold a phone, and they will be delighted to tell you what you are doing wrong.