Online Dating Profile Photo Tips

Most people over 60 have the same problem with profile photos, and it is not vanity. It is that the only recent pictures of you are group shots at somebody else's birthday, taken from below, in a dim restaurant. Meanwhile the photo is doing more work than anything else you write: people look at it first, and a profile with one gets far more interest than a profile without.

The good news is that fixing it is a twenty minute job, and the camera in your pocket is better than the professional gear of thirty years ago. Five things, in the order they matter.

1. Say Cheese!

The single biggest lever, and it costs nothing. Smiling photos get roughly twice the messages of unsmiling ones. The trouble is that most of us have one face for cameras, learned at the licence bureau, and it says "how much longer". A posed smile held for four seconds turns into a grimace, which is why so many otherwise good photos look strained. The fix is timing, not effort: get whoever is holding the phone to say something stupid, then take the picture in the second after you laugh, not during. That is the one that looks like you.

2. Location, Location, Location

Light does most of the work, and the best light in Canada is free and sitting right there. Face a window in daylight and you get soft, even light coming at you from the front, which is the most flattering there is. What you want to avoid is the ceiling bulb after dark, which drops shadows into your eye sockets, and the bathroom mirror, which has never improved anybody. Outdoors, aim for the hour after breakfast or before supper rather than noon. Anywhere pleasant will do and it doubles as a conversation starter: the deck, the cottage, the trail, the lake, the front step with the leaves turning. And if you have a good one from a trip, use it. People ask about those.

3. Composition

Two mechanical things, both easy. First, put yourself in the middle. Dating sites crop photos automatically to fit different spots on the page, and they always crop from the edges, so anyone standing off to one side loses part of their head. Head and shoulders, or head to waist, with a little room around you. Second, get the camera up. Hold the phone slightly above eye level and look up at it a fraction. Shot from below, everybody gets a second chin they did not have in real life. Teenagers worked this out a decade ago and there is no reason they should keep it.

4. "Which one is you?"

Your best photo is probably one with four other people in it, because that is when your face is doing something natural. Use it later in the gallery, not first. A stranger scrolling past should not have to work out which one you are, and "sorry, are you the one on the right?" is a poor opening message. Leave out anything with an ex in it, and with a late husband or wife too. That is not about hiding your life. It is that a photograph explains none of the context, and you would rather tell somebody about that yourself, at a point you choose.

5. The Professional Job

We see more properly shot photos on the site than we used to, and they do look good. They are also not always as pricey as people assume, particularly if you go to somebody working out of a home studio rather than a chain. One member found a better route than paying at all: he told his son the family had not had proper photos taken in fifteen years and it was getting embarrassing. The family got their portraits, he got a headshot out of it, and the bill went elsewhere. If that is not available, ask a grandchild. They have been photographing themselves since primary school and will enjoy telling you exactly what you are doing wrong.

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