Online Dating Experts Top 10 Tips To Creating a Winning Online Dating Profile Photo

Top 10 Tips To Create a Winning Internet Dating Pictures

1.  Do Use a Professional Photographer.  Make sure you purchase the online digital rights to post and use it online.  You might need to pay more.  Make sure it is clear and how many images you will walk away with.  They might take 100 shots in a photo shoot, but you typically are only purchasing 10 images.  You will get to choose which ones.

2.  Do Get a Head and Shoulders Shot.  This of this as like your professional dater image.  Professional actors get what are known as “Head Shots.” That is exactly what you want as well.  Your Prospective Dates are typically searching on profiles and will just be viewing and scanning through a list of many profile photo thumbnail images.  You have just the space of a thumbnail photograph avatar to capture their visual attention to incent them to click on through to your profile and read on.  What is the best way to capture a Prospective Dates’ attention?  With just your radiantly smiling face showing.  They have a moment to feel a touch of interest, a smidgen of attraction , a glimmer of captivation, enough to motivate them to take the action of clicking through to read your profile.

You might be wanting to display a body shot.  This is a good idea.  What’s a disaster?  Don’t show you in a thong bikini sporting your summer tan, sun bleached locks, and puka shells necklace.  You will garner a LOT of attention and interest, just not for a relationship.  You can always incorporate some informal setting photos which I recommend in Tip #10 where more of your figure or physique are on display.

Online Dating Coach April Braswell Internet Dating Profile Photos Pictures Advice

3.  Do Wear Face Framing Clothes.  Ditch the turtleneck.  Ladies, wear soft, feminine, date-worthy clothes.  This is not the same as your executive bio page professional executive photograph.  So, don’t wear your suit blazer.  A jacket in a soft, nubby, touch me fabric like a velvet or corduroy blazer is, however, totally ok.  You want face framing and soft looking for women.  Men, you can wear a suit jacket because that merely serves to accentuate you masculine authority image.  Good for creating chemistry.

4.  Do Don Face Framing Flattering Colors. Do wear colors which contrast with your coloring to help you accentuate and frame your face.  Color and the Hue of the Color add the dimension of VALUE to your photograph.  Think as if it were to be recorded in Black and White that you don’t want everything in the photograph to be all light or medium gray.  You want some elements of contrast.  This both helps to frame your visage and to make your photo just a little bit interesting and captivating to the eye.

How Do You Accomplish That?  A Simple Color Guide

If you are fair – medium skin toned, wear a dark fabric.  Ladies:  A scoop necked black top.  A merlot colored v-neck velour top.  Maybe a bright colored top.  Be careful to avoid light colored tops.  You will blend in and fade away and your Prospective Date will simply pass your profile right on by and not even bother to click through to read more.  The idea is to accentuate your face.

If you are medium – dark skinned, wear a white or ivory colored top to accentuate your face in a small photograph.  Alternatively, people with dark complexions can definitely wear eye-catching bright colors and look knock out gorgeous.  When you go to your photo shoot, bring 2 or 3 tops with you.  A good professional photographer will likely photograph you in at least two of the tops and will be able to provide you with excellent color guidance on which tops will look best in a photo.

Ladies:  A special note for you.  Bring your make up bag with you to your photo session.  Go ahead and do your makeup before you get there.  While a photo session is typically under extra-bright lights, don’t over apply your make up.  You will need to deepen some of the make up which you normally wear.  However, let your professional photographer guide you in this.  They do this daily and see the results.  Follow their lead and leverage their expertise.

Additionally let your professional photographer give you some photo session make up tips.  Your professional photographer might suggest you add some extra eye shadow, some highlighting powder on the insides of your eyes, or to apply your lipstick outside the line of your mouth.  You want to have all of your make up with you to enable this with ease.

5.  Do Smile.  Yes, your mother and every photographer who took your grade school class photos has told you to “Smile!” when you were being photographed.  In addition the better professional photographers will have you move about a bit.  You will practically be laughing out loud feeling like a super model.  And when your photographer has you in motion and captures your smile, it will be a fresh smile, not one which has been held for 2 minutes so that now it looks slightly jarring.  When your professional photographer has you moving about a bit and laughing slightly, your smile will be radiant and captivating.  Then your photograph will reflect you at your best with your most dazzling smile and laugh-filled sparkling eyes.  Won’t that be a great profile photo?

6.  Do Look Natural.  Your professional photographer may photograph you indoors at their photography studio.  Or they may take you outdoors for your photo shoot.  Either setting will be good for you.  You want to look like YOU.  The point is to position you at your best.  The first 15 minutes or so of you photo session, most of those photographs simply won’t be your best.  You’ll be too stiff in your body posture and holding back.  Your professional photographer knows this.  They are a professional.  Thank you very much.  This is part of what you are paying them for.  Their job is not just to press the button for 20 minutes.  Part of their photography expertise is to get you warmed up and comfortable and engaged in rapport with them so they can capture that on film.  It will take you a little while to relax and warm up and truly look like your genuine and natural self.

7.  Do Avoid Dorky/Goofy Looks.  While you do want to be smiling and laughing throughout your photo session, you do want to avoid selecting, uploading and displaying photographs of you with your face caught in a dorky goofy expression.  Do not select and display a photograph of you with your mouth wide open agape when you are in the midst of a guffaw.  Those might be fun to share with your friends on Facebook.  But they should not be your primary online dating profile photograph.  Yes, you will stand out in the thumbnail photographs in the search results.  However, that is not the manner in which you want to stand out.  Your NEW profile will be featured with that dorky expression frozen in time and your Prospective Date will never get able to get that image out of their head nor take your seriously for a relationship.  Guys, I’m talking to you.  You might think I wouldn’t have to mention this, but sadly, I must.

8.  Do Focus On You.  Make sure your photographs, all of them, your primary profile photograph as well as all of your secondary supporting photographs are focused on you and you alone.  Do not include group photographs with you and your friends.  Certainly, do not include photographs with you and your children, both because of the tone you want to set as well as for safety and security reasons.  Nor do you want to include any of your own photography hobby photographs of cute ducks, puppies, kittens, or deer.  Keep the focus of your photographs on yourself.  It is you with whom your Prospective Date will be sharing the evening, not the ducklings, however cute and darling they are.

9.  Do Vary the Setting.  Do be sure to include you in more than one setting in the 3-5 photographs which I suggest as a guideline for how many photos to display in your internet dating profile.  Even if all 10-15 of the professionally taken photographs from your photography session are knock out gorgeously you amazing, do not include 5 photographs of you only from that photo session.  You want to show you in a few different settings.  You are subtly planting the idea and suggesting visually to your Prospective Date what a fun life companion you are and some possible date activity ideas for the future.

10.  Do Also Add hobby and activities for your secondary dating profile photos.  Now if you do vary the setting of your 3-5 online dating profiles photos, what should the secondary photos include?  In your internet dating profile, you mentioned a series of hobbies and activities which you enjoy and engage in.  Capture some casual and captivating images of you in those settings.  Yes, you plant the idea of your Prospective Date sharing those fun activities with you.  And you show yourself in a genuine manner, which is appropriately attractive.  You want to attract and draw Prospective Dates who want to share your actual life with you.

Additionally, if you are particularly good looking, these more casual photographs serve a secondary purpose.  There are plenty of scam artists of one kind or another prowling the online dating sites and the social networking sites where singles meet, socialize, and mingle.  By providing more candid photographs of you in a variety of settings, you send a subtle message to your Prospective Date that you are a real human being and not one of those professional scam artists.  Pretty nifty, isn’t it?

By following the top 10 tips to creating a winning online dating profile photograph, you will find you look better online and that your dating profile gets more views and you get more responses from Prospective Dates. And isn’t that whole reason you posted a profile?  To meet more singles and go on more dates!  Have fun and Happy Dating and Relationships!

Happy Dating and Relationships,

April Braswell