Picture Love: Your Dating Profile Shot Says a Ga-billion Words

Saturday afternoon I found myself riffling through a client’s tee shirts, helping him select the next look for his photo shoot in my apartment. He’s an objectively handsome man with a ton of personality, blue eyes and an athlete’s build. And did I mention he has a great job that he loves? And he loves his mother? He’s your basic catch.

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Saturday afternoon I found myself riffling through a client’s tee shirts, helping him select the next look for his photo shoot in my apartment. He’s an objectively handsome man with a ton of personality, blue eyes and an athlete’s build. And did I mention he has a great job that he loves? And he loves his mother? He’s your basic catch.

He called me last week with a request. He wanted professional pictures taken.

My first thought was that he wasn’t an actor or a model. Maybe he wanted these pictures to do double-duty for his work in the business world?

Wrong. He wanted them purely for the purposes of online dating. He’d seen an article written about a friend in a local paper, and the picture that accompanied it was such a good, honest, cool likeness, that it got his wheels turning. He wanted a picture that captured him like that.

I was initially skeptical. The pictures he’d been using were good ones. What would new ones suggest? That he was an actor or model? (He’s not.) That he was vain? (He’s not that, either.)

“Here’s the deal,” I challenged him. “What do you do when someone asks you about these pictures when you’re on a date?”

“I tell them that a friend took them.” The photographer, Victoria, had been hanging out with us and we’d been laughing and joking over Guatemalan rum for about an hour. We wanted to loosen him up a little from the pressure of a good shoot.

“OK, fair enough. And if they ask ‘why’?”

“I tell them it was for this! By the time they’ve met me for a date, it's a non-issue. They’ve agreed to meet me and I look like my pictures. Everybody’s happy.”

And he is totally right.

The new pictures are everything he hoped for...and look just like him. When he walks into the bar for his first meeting, that girl is going to thank her lucky stars. And if he likes her, he’ll tell her all about the Guatemalan rum.

Your pictures are the first thing people notice about you, besides your age and other basic stats. It’s important that you are proud of what they look like and that they look like you. We’re not talking Glamour Shots circa 1997, here, people.

At first, I was unconvinced about using professional pictures because I’d never thought about them outside of the context of actors and models. In fact, I’ve discouraged professional performers from using traditional-looking-into-the-lens headshots as their primary profile pictures. For one, it advertises their business immediately (and who wants to lead with work first?) and I wanted to ensure that their profiles were seen as legitimate. While making mistakes online (oh, yes...I've made a few missteps in my day), I’d used a couple of these traditional headshots. A few matches revealed that they were initially doubtful that I was an actual person! (I did eventually encounter a few of these dummy profiles online…fantasy profiles that weren’t actual people.)

And while I still don’t recommend that an actor use a work headshot, I think a well-taken, well-lit picture that shows the subject laughing at something just out of frame is an absolute winner…for anyone, whether you’re a doctor or just play one on television.

So, go for it. Hire that professional photographer or ask your best friend to get artistic with his iPhone the next time you head to the bar. Just be sure that he frames you well and there’s plenty of light on your face (stay tuned for a guest blog full of profile photo tips from our talented photographer, Victoria Matlock).

Oh! And be sure that no one else is in the picture with you. There’s nothing quite so awkward as cutting your ex out of a profile shot…

XO, The Match Maven