Dating App Photos — Everything You Need to Know
Hi! I’m Steve Dean, and I've been an online dating consultant and coach since 2011. I’ve now seen over 500,000 dating profiles across over 300 different dating apps. Every day I see the same mistakes from both clients and friends, so I’m finally sharing my best tips and practical considerations here! If you ever want to dig deeper or chat with me directly, book a free call with me on my coaching page.
STEP 1: DEVELOP A PHOTO STRATEGY THAT AVOIDS KEY PITFALLS
Some people mistakenly believe that for online dating, they must look as generically attractive as possible in order to get matches. However, getting “more matches” is useless if your matches aren’t people you’d ever want to meet in the first place!
Low-compatibility matches are like weeds in your garden — they take up attentional space that you could be using to cultivate more meaningful connections. If a dating app has 50,000 users, but you only want to go on dates with maybe ~5–10 total people before finding one you really click with, then your profile needs to weed out up to 49,990 out of those 50,000 users.
Most dating apps ask you to upload anywhere from 1–10 photos (about 6 on average). You have six opportunities for your photos to impact someone enough for them to consider matching, messaging, or meeting you.
Survey data1 has shown that most people make their decision to like/pass within 3-6 seconds of landing on your profile, so they may only ever see 1–2 of your photos before moving on. What this means for you is that your photos matter, and your photo order matters.
I recommend you think through your photo order this way:
1st Photo — Recognize, Captivate
You’re smiling at camera, face and eyes clearly visible, looking kind, friendly, non-threatening. It should be easy for someone to recognize you on the street after seeing just this photo, as well as grok your overall vibe as a person.2nd Photo — Showcase, Engage
You’re doing an activity that captures your vibe, or surrounded by things that help someone understand you; ideally show off your whole body here so peeps don’t think you’re catfishing.3rd Photo — Contextualize, Reassure
You’re with friends, colleagues, family, and/or pets; show that you’re a respected member of your community, or that you have people/animals who care about you; this is your social proof that you’re not some kind of serial killer.4th Photo — Explore, Invite
Reveal more layers of your life, e.g., you at home (so people can see how you keep your space), or you traveling, playing sports, or engaged in a hobby. Great opportunity to use a gif or video (when possible) to showcase you in action!Remaining Photos — Have fun & be [the good] weird
Show off things like your favorite memories, your sense of humor, your aesthetic, your emotional range, your sexy/romantic side; find photos that someone could have fun responding to. Avoid redundancies when possible. No one needs to see three selfies or travel photos in a row.
STEP 2: SELECT PHOTOS THAT SHOWCASE UNIQUE DIMENSIONS OF YOUR LIFE
The beauty of dating apps is that they do the work while we sleep, working around the clock to present our profiles to potential suitors…but what will future bae see? Will they see your face? Your body? Your silhouette from behind as you hike a mountain?
Rather than solely showing yourself at your “most attractive,” focus on using each of your photo slots to take the viewer on a journey through the important parts of your life, as well as important things to know about dating you.
We all contain multitudes, which is why it pains my soul to see people put up five mirror selfies in a row and somehow believe they’ve meaningfully conveyed who they are. Whether it’s our best day or our worst day, we are more than what we look like.
Unfortunately, modern dating apps enable others to judge us almost exclusively based on what we look like, so in order to fight back, we must consistently strive to add context and dimensionality to our dating profiles, photos, captions, videos, gifs, audio snippets, messages, and more.
I recommend selecting photos that showcase:
Where you spend your time each day
Sports, activities, and/or creative pursuits you enjoy
Things that make you happy
Places you've visited, things you did there
Qualities your friends and lovers appreciate about you beyond the superficial
Glimpses into your intended future
Plants, animals, or people you spend a lot of time with
Your religious, community, or spiritual values
Your professional ambitions
Your emotional range
Activities that lots of people know and respect you for
Remember, every relevant compatibility metric that we fail to include upfront means that either a) someone won’t feel confident enough that we’re a good fit, and will skip right over us, or b) we’ll be stuck trying to exasperatedly suss out compatibility downstream — in our messages and on our dates — precisely when it’s the most tedious, frustrating, and costly.
Protip: Place all your relevant photos into a specific folder. This will make it easier to evaluate which ones actually work together, upload them across a variety of apps, and get others’ help in selecting your best options.
STEP 3: CAPTION YOUR PHOTOS WHENEVER POSSIBLE
Fun fact — on the popular dating app Hinge, you’re only permitted 600 characters of profile text, yet you get 900 characters of photo captions!
3 prompts x 200 characters per prompt = 600 characters
6 photos x 150 characters per caption = 900 characters
Captions are like little easter eggs that highlight the nuances not visible in your photos or elsewhere in your profile. They offer windows of insight into your life, your sense of humor, and your creativity.
Your captions can riff on:
Throwbacks to things mentioned in your profile
Fun facts about you, or something in your photo
Story time / anecdotes
Reflections on your life goals / values
Glimpses into your sense of humor
Date ideas you'd like to queue up for the near future
Questions you'd like your viewer to answer
Here are a few of my captioned photos from various dating apps:
STEP 4: ASK FOR FEEDBACK ON HOW TO TELL YOUR STORY MORE EFFECTIVELY
AND GET HELP TAKING MORE PHOTOS
When I’m helping my clients build their photo lineups, I always challenge them to ask their friends and former lovers for feedback. It’s incredibly helpful to get honest perspectives on whether your photos capture your life as people who actually know you understand it.
They will know when you’re coming off as superficial.
They will know when a photo feels forced.
They will call you out if you have three selfies in a row.
That visceral, honest feedback is worth its weight in gold. They may even suggest dimensions of your life that they believe really make you unique, and encourage you to try including types of photos you may have never considered.
If possible, ask your friends to see their photo lineups as well, and ask them to share the story they think someone might be telling themselves in their minds as they scroll through their specific photo lineup. Ask them to share their internal story as they scroll through your photos as well. Hearing people tell these stories can be hilarious at times— there’s literally a comedian in NYC who sells out venues with her live reads of people’s Tinder profiles.
To keep your photos fresh, ask friends to take photos of you whenever possible, especially when you’re out doing things you love. Tell them ahead of time that you’re trying to take a variety of new photos for your dating apps, and they should just take dozens throughout the day and you can all decide together later which ones are best.
You can even ask a stranger on the street to take a photo. Make sure you get a rough sense of how you want it staged so they don’t just take an awkward shot where half the photo is just sidewalk. You can literally say “please hold the camera here and take the photo like this.”
Remember, if it’s just you smiling up against generic backdrops, the photos won’t do much work for you. Sure, they show what you look like, but they don’t show any insights into your life. The thing that makes dating app photos truly stand out is that they invite your viewers to see your life in action and imagine themselves alongside you, cheering you on, maybe even cuddled up with you.
STEP 5: TRY OUT DIFFERENT PHOTOS AND LINEUPS
SWAP PHOTOS UNTIL YOUR MATCHES AND MESSAGES BECOME RELEVANT AND DELIGHTFUL
The mere act of uploading new photos is enough to already give you a bump in the algorithms. It's a sign of activity, and dating apps frequently give preferential treatment to their most active users.
Remember, it’s okay to include photos (or profile elements) that may turn off lots of people. That’s sort of the point! Fun and playful photos can attract fun and playful people. Some photo lineups can even reduce the incidence rate of unwanted messages.
My friend Anne explains,
“For several years I always included one photo that had 100% efficacy rating at eliminating dick picks while still producing sincere interest and messages: a pic of me dressed as Miss Frizzle from the Magic School Bus series. Whenever I used it in a profile, I’d see sleazy DMs go away pretty much instantly, and when I tried changing it out, the creepy messages resumed. Purely anecdotal, but it’s helped to inform my thinking about profile pics. I always theorized it worked because of how it blended a sort of innocent nostalgia with genuine relatability.”
Of course, Anne also includes other photos in her profile that showcase her in less over-the-top scenarios, like sitting by her laptop working from home.
Above, you can glean further insights thanks to the presence of stickers on her laptop! Keep this in mind when setting the scene for your own photos. If you’re at home, you can highlight your unique vibes by including your books, pets, art, projects, and/or recently-prepared foods!
Should I be using AI for any of my photos?
Yes for editing out obstructions/distractions; NO for everything else.
I strongly recommend against using AI-generated/augmented photos on personal profiles. They immediately distance you from your viewer by forcing your visage into the uncanny valley. You no longer look real. AI profile photos intuitively feel like a form of catfishing, which is a huge turnoff for most daters who are desperately seeking something genuine from the internet voids. Using an AI photo may also indicate that you didn’t have enough confidence in your unedited photos in the first place.
Of course, many other factors distort your appearance, including lighting, hydration, and lens choice. The Photofeeler blog reveals,
If you take a photo of the same person with a 24mm, 50mm, and 100mm lens, their face will look dramatically different in each shot. Selfies are usually taken with wide-angle smartphone lenses (24-40mm), which can elongate or distort facial features.
On the other hand, professional headshots are typically shot with an 85-100mm lens– a focal length known for producing the most true-to-life facial proportions.
That’s why so many people say their AI headshot “added 10-15 pounds” to their face. It didn’t. It just used realistic camera proportions instead of the slimming, exaggerated angle you’re used to in selfies.
Closing thoughts…
Today, someone you may soon meet or even fall in love with, somewhere else in this world, could be picking up their phone, expecting to come across 50+ other profiles, and might just come across yours. They may do so while lying in bed, while sitting on the toilet, or while at a bar surrounded by friends. Will your photos catch their eye long enough for them to engage?
Do you feel more confident about how to present yourself on dating apps now? Have you come across other styles of photos or setting-the-scene tips that have worked for you? Please share them!
Need help with dating, personal development, or navigating relationships? Let’s talk! I’ve been a coach and dating app consultant for nearly 15 years! Schedule a call with me and we’ll talk through your life, goals, struggles, and strategy. First call is free, and I’ll do what I can to point you in the right direction!
Further Reading…
Disclaimer
Most dating apps don’t have your interests at heart. They want you to keep coming back, swiping endlessly. This means that even if you implement all of these tips, you might still need to battle it out with the algorithms and calibrate expectations accordingly.
At a recent dating industry conference, I heard the former CEO of a top-five dating app admit:
"The predictors for long-term success are virtually nonexistent. The goal for these apps is to get people to long-term subscribe, and potentially meet."
Dating apps can feel like hamster wheels of hope in a capitalist hellscape. Most will wantonly waste our time and charge us through the nose for the opportunity. Per the aggregated Tinder statistics collected by Peach App, in 2021 the average 32-year-old male on Tinder was rejected by 99.7% of the people he swiped on.
If you’re expecting 99.7% of people to pass on you by default, then it really is in your best interest to make every single photo do as much heavy lifting as possible.
Female-identified users fare significantly better, but can still expect well over half of the people they like to not reciprocate the interest.
https://www.mic.com/life/we-speed-swipe-on-tinder-for-different-reasons-depending-on-our-gender-18808262