Are Selfies Good for Dating Apps?

One good selfie is fine, but a set made mostly of selfies hurts you. A selfie shows your face and nothing about your life, and it quietly tells her that nobody else was around to take the picture. Use one clear, well-lit selfie at most, and fill the rest of the set with photos other people took.

A selfie does one thing well. It shows your face up close, and she needs to see your face before she can say yes to you.

That makes a single selfie useful, especially if your other photos are from far away. What it cannot do is show her a place, a friend, a hobby, or you in motion. It is one piece of information, and the same piece every time.

She reads a profile as a small picture of your week. If most of the photos were taken by you, in your own home or car, she starts to guess that your life does not produce photos with other people in them.

That is not fair, and it is also what she sees. Compare it with a page where someone else was clearly standing there laughing when the photo was taken. The difference lies in the evidence around him rather than in the man.

A selfie held at arm's length also distorts your face, and it makes a worse photograph of most men than a friend's phone would.

a dating coach went through a long run of men's profiles and the selfies were a consistent problem. Taken from below the chin, with the light coming up at the face, off to one side, half in the shot. His point is that these look low effort and low status, and that showing you cannot take a decent photo is a signal in itself.

The usual faults are the angle, the light and the setting. A phone held low shows the underside of your chin and your nostrils. A dim room puts shadows under your eyes. A bathroom or a parked car puts nothing in the background that she wants to see.

A selfie earns a place when it is clearly better than the alternatives and when the rest of the set is strong.

Take it outside in daylight, with the light on your face and not behind you. Hold the phone at or slightly above eye level, not below it. Look at the camera and not at the screen. Stand somewhere with a bit of background, such as a street or a park, so it shows a place.

Put it in the back half of the set, not first. Your lead photo should be one a friend took, because it is the one she decides on.

You do not need a photographer. a dating coach's advice is that a man could easily get better photos if he sat down with any friend and had them take a lot of pictures. Pick the best from many.

Hand your phone to a friend, stand outside in daylight, and have them take thirty shots while you walk, stop, and look away and back. Most will be useless and a few will be better than anything in your camera roll.

If nobody is around, prop your phone on a ledge or a car roof and set the timer. It gets you a photo without the raised arm.

Do not use five selfies in a row, even good ones. Do not use the mirror shot as your lead photo, and do not use one taken in a car.

Also avoid heavy filters. a dating coach says photos that look like they were taken on a phone by a friend work best, because very polished shots start to look staged. A natural photo of a real moment beats any edit.

Many men have a camera roll that really is mostly selfies and screenshots. That is the fix to make first.

A set can be built from selfies you already have on your phone, with several outfits and settings, checked by hand before it reaches you. It gives you photos that look like you on a good day, without a photographer or an afternoon of posing. Whichever way you get them, the aim is the same: a face she can see, and a life she can picture.