Dating profile photos

A photograph from the year you will meet in

The lead photograph on a dating profile is a small promise: this is my face now, in light a person could recognize, doing something I actually do. Hair, glasses, a beard, a haircut, and the way a face sits after a year of ordinary living all belong in that file. A wedding picture from three summers ago, a trip photographed by someone who does not know you, or a crop from a group where you were not the subject asks a stranger to meet a previous version. If the hair is different, the picture should say so. Captions are easy to skip. Faces are not.

Take it in the season you are publishing, or close enough that a coat and a tan are not doing the lying. A winter collar can stay if you will wear that coat on the date. A tan that has already faded should not be the skin you advertise in November. You do not need a new portrait every month. You do need to retire a file when you would be surprised, across a table, to hear that you look like it. Put the year in the filename. When you hesitate, the hesitation is the test. A better dating photograph is one that agrees more closely with the person who walks in. It is not a higher human worth, and it is not a claim that a tidier file makes you a better person to date.

Old favorites are hard to delete because someone once said you looked great in them. Ask a narrower question. Would a person who has never met you recognize you in daylight this month? If the answer needs a speech about lighting, weight, age, or a haircut you no longer have, the favorite is a souvenir. Keep it in a private album. Give the profile a file from this year.

One frame where the face is easy to find

At least one photograph in the set should show the face clearly. Both eyes visible. No sunglasses. No hat brim cutting the brow. No hair across the eye you are hoping they will ignore. No extreme profile that hides the mouth. No candlelight so dim that the eyes become two guesses. People are deciding whether they want to meet a person. A row of landscapes with a tiny figure is a hobby gallery. Give them one frame they could use to pick you out of a café.

That clear frame can be plain. A window, a quiet wall, a shirt you already wear, the camera far enough back that the nose is the nose you have. You can smile or keep a calmer mouth. You can look slightly away in a second frame if one frame looks at the lens. The set needs one unambiguous face. The other frames can carry the activity, a fuller view of your body, or a friend whose face is not larger than yours. If every photo hides the eyes, the profile is a puzzle. Puzzles entertain. They do not introduce you.

Sunglasses are useful in sun and useless as a whole grid. A single outdoor frame with them is fine when another frame shows the eyes. A hat with a deep brim does the same theft from above. If you love the hat, push it back for one picture or take it off for the lead. The lead is the face. The hat can return in the activity shot, where it belongs to the day rather than to a disguise.

An activity you would still be doing next month

The second photograph should be something you do. Cooking at the counter you actually use. A walk in the park you already like. A dog that lives with you. A sport you play this season. A market, a bookshop, a bicycle, a table with a game you know the rules of. The activity gives you a natural expression, and it gives the other person a true thing to ask about. If you do not climb, do not rent a wall for the grid. If you do not own a boat, do not stand in front of someone else’s. The question will arrive with the drinks. You will have to answer it for an hour.

A real activity has ordinary details: a normal kitchen, a coat you own, shoes you can walk in, a bag you did not borrow for the color. Those details keep the set from belonging to anyone. Crop other people’s faces if they did not agree to be on your profile, or choose a frame where you are the only face. A group photograph where a stranger has to guess which one is you fails the clear-face rule even when the party was good. If you are with friends, stand where the light reaches you and where you are not half behind someone else’s head.

Props have a short life. A rented sports car, a cocktail you do not like, a costume from one night, a city you were in for a weekend: each of them becomes a story you have to keep telling. Choose the thing you would still be doing if the date moved to next month. The photograph ages more slowly when the life in it is still yours.

A filter that moves the jaw is a different person

A filter that calms a little shine is a small edit. A filter that narrows the jaw, lifts the eyes, shrinks the nose, or lengthens the neck is a different person. The date will be with the jaw you brought. When the photograph disagrees, the first minutes of the meeting are spent on the disagreement. Delete the warped file. If you want a change you can actually wear, change the light, the distance, the collar, or the hair. Those show up in the room. Skin smoothing that erases a mark the other person will see across the table is a smaller version of the same miss. Texture you live with can stay.

Color filters do a quieter version of the swap. Push the skin orange or gray and you have changed the face they will compare with the person in the chair. If you later drop the file into a color tool, CIELAB, the color model published by the CIE in 1976, is a way to describe lightness and two opponent axes, roughly yellow-blue and red-green. It is not a theory of beauty and not a grade. A filter that moves the skin will move that description. Turn automatic enhance off before you judge the picture. Keep the file that looks like the window you were standing in.

Beauty modes often hide inside the camera app under friendly names. Open the settings and look for a slider on the face. Set it to off, take the picture, and only then decide whether the face needs anything. If the only way you like the file is with the jaw slider moved, the file is not ready to represent you. The slider can stay in the app. It does not belong on the profile.

Clothes, and a narrow note if the shirt is red

Wear something you would wear to the date. A collar that looks even in daylight, in a color you can carry, will look like you. A costume jacket, a slogan you do not believe, or a neckline you have to keep adjusting will become the subject. Fit sits under color. A shirt that pulls at the buttons is a picture of the buttons. One clear color near the face is enough. The activity photo can be the sweater you walk in. The face photo can be the shirt you would wear to dinner. If you are between two shirts, wear each for the clear-face frame and keep the one that lets the face stay the subject.

If the shirt is red, treat the red as a garment, not as a strategy. Elliot and Niesta, in a 2008 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, reported a narrow lab finding about red in a romantic rating task. It was not a universal rule, and it was not a finding that every dating photograph should be red. A red that grays your skin, or that shouts over a quiet face, is still the wrong red. Your own coloring picks the red, if you wear one at all. The rest of the set can be the colors you already live in. A person does not need a red grid in order to want to meet you.

Full-length frames are optional. If you include one, let it be this year’s body in clothes that fit, standing in the activity rather than in a bathroom mirror with the phone covering your chest. You do not owe anyone that frame. If you want the information available, make it true. A cropped body from a different year, or a pose you cannot stand in for the length of a conversation, restarts the disagreement the jaw filter started.

An afternoon, not a production

You can make the set in an hour when the light is good. Face a window. Clean the lens. Put the phone on a stack of books, or hand it to a friend who will take two sentences of direction: eye level, a step farther back, no filter. Use the rear camera. Use a timer if you are alone. Take the clear face first, several frames, and change only your expression between them. Then move to the activity. If the activity is outdoors, go while the light is still soft, early or late, and keep the sun out of your eyes and out from directly behind your head. A bar at night and a kitchen under a ceiling spot are how clear faces become muddy ones.

Look at the roll on a screen larger than the phone if you have one. The phone’s own glow flatters the file. On a laptop you will see the warped jaw, the closed eye, the friend you forgot to crop, the art on an old apartment wall. Delete in the same afternoon, while you still know which frames are honest. Four to six pictures are plenty. One clear face. One activity. One fuller frame if you want it. One spare that is simply pleasant. Then stop shooting. Another forty frames will not invent a new face. They will make you late to choose.

What you publish, and when you look again

Put the clear face first. People may never reach a good picture hiding in slot five. The activity can be second. The rest can be quieter. A caption should add a fact the picture does not hold, not a joke that contradicts it. If you wear glasses at the dates you actually go on, the glasses belong in at least one frame. If you have a beard this month, the beard is in the lead. Variety helps when it is still you: one smile, one calmer face, one place. Variety is a mismatch when each frame seems to be a different age.

Before you publish, ask one honest friend a narrow question: which of these looks most like me in this room right now? Ignore advice to look hotter, younger, or more like a profile that is not yours. Ask whether they would recognize you. Then stop collecting opinions. Six friends will request six different jaws. You have one. Publish the set, and put a note on the calendar for a season from now. Open the lead photo in daylight and decide whether it is still true. That review is the practice. The rest is a window and an hour.

If a date says you look different from the pictures, believe the sentence and retake the lead. Do not argue them back to the file. The file’s job was to agree with you. When it stops agreeing, it is finished, even if it once did its job well. Replace it with a picture from the month you are in. Leave the old one off the profile the same day.