How Many Photos You Need for The League

You need at least three photos to apply to The League, and it strongly recommends six. Its help center says applicants with six photos are much more likely to get in, so six is the number to aim for. Every one of them should show your face clearly.

Three photos gets your application submitted. It does not do much else.

The League's applications are read by its own members, who are partly checking that you are a real person and partly deciding whether you seem worth meeting. Three photos gives them very little to go on. One bad angle is a third of the evidence, and a short set can look unfinished or even fake.

Six gives them enough to form a fair picture. If one photo is a little off, the other five carry it. That is why The League pushes six so hard, and why it is worth taking seriously.

There is one catch. Six weak photos are not better than four strong ones. If you only have four good photos of yourself, the answer is not to pad the set with two bad ones. It is to go and get two more good ones taken.

The League's own advice is a split of two headshots, two full-length shots and two lifestyle photos. Each pair answers a different question.

The headshots answer what your face looks like, up close and in good light. The full-length shots answer what the rest of you looks like, standing normally, not flexing in a mirror. The lifestyle photos answer what you do with your time: cooking, hiking, playing a sport, out with friends, somewhere you actually go.

a dating coach puts the principle behind this well. Every photo you choose says something about you, so choose them on purpose. Six photos that each show a different part of your life tell a much fuller story than six versions of the same afternoon.

The League gives a short list of things to avoid, and each one exists for a reason.

Heavy filters make you look like a different person, and the first date then feels like meeting a stranger. Sunglasses hide your eyes, which is most of what makes a face readable. Mirror selfies look like you had nobody to take the photo.

a dating coach is blunt on that last one. If the mirror selfie was taken in a messy bathroom, get rid of it. Even a clean one is almost always beaten by a photo someone else took of you.

The League asks you to limit selfies, and to use no more than two or three group photos.

A selfie is fine as one photo in six. A set made mostly of them reads as a man who spends a lot of time alone with his phone, whether that is true or not.

Group photos are useful because they show you have friends and a social life. They also make her work to find you. Never put one first, and make sure you are easy to pick out in any you keep. If the group photo is mostly other people and you are at the edge of it, cut it.

Your first photo decides whether anyone looks at the other five.

Make it a headshot: face clear, reasonably close, eyes toward the camera, in daylight or near a window rather than under a ceiling light at night. No group, no sunglasses, no hat pulled low. Then order the rest so each one shows something new. A different outfit, a different place, a different day.

If you only change one thing after reading this, change which photo is first.

A friend with a phone and an hour in daylight can fix most sets. Go to two or three places you actually spend time, change your shirt between them, and take far more photos than you need. Six good ones are usually hiding somewhere in a hundred shots.

Photos show her what you look like. They cannot tell her what an evening with you is like, and that is the job of your About Me.

The League names a complete About Me as one of the things that gives you the best chance of getting in, alongside strong photos and verifying your account. Use it to say something concrete about how you spend your week, in two or three lines she can picture and reply to.

A full set of six good photos and an About Me that sounds like a person is what gets a man through The League's review. It is also what gets him dates once he is in.