What Photos Work Best on OkCupid?

OkCupid's own advice comes down to a few points. Add more photos, and vary them so they show how you actually live. Leave your friends out, but keep the pet in, because OkCupid says pets tend to bring in more likes. Photos taken in the late afternoon get more likes too, and captions help you show up in OkCupid Discovery.

Each tip makes sense once you think about what a woman is doing when she looks at your photos. She is trying to picture you. More photos give her more to go on. Variety shows her a life rather than one afternoon. Friends make her work out which one is you, and a pet tells her something warm about your days.

The late afternoon tip is about light. The sun sits lower, the light turns softer and warmer, and faces look better in it than under harsh midday sun or a bathroom bulb.

You do not need a photographer to use that tip. You need a friend, a phone and an hour before sunset. Go outside and stand so the light falls on your face rather than behind you. Take a lot of shots, because most of them will be average and you only need the few that are not. A park, a quiet street or a café terrace gives you a real background without the clutter of your bedroom.

OkCupid also notes that pets tend to bring in more messages as well as likes. That fits with everything else here: a photo that gives a woman something easy to ask about makes it easier for her to write first.

"Add more photos" is good advice with one condition attached. Every photo you add has to be a good one.

A woman does not average your photos. She tends to believe the worst one, on the reasoning that the worst photo is probably closest to what you really look like. Three strong photos and one weak one add up to a weaker set than the three strong ones on their own.

So add photos until you run out of good ones, then stop. If you cannot say what a photo shows her about you, it is taking up space. Take it out. When you are unsure about one, leave it out, because the doubt you feel is usually the same doubt she will feel.

Variety is where most sets fall short. Five photos from one day, in one shirt, read as one day. She learns the same thing about you five times.

Aim for photos that each tell her something different. One clear shot of your face that she can trust. One full-length photo so she can see your build. Then a few that show what you do: cooking, a hike, a sport you play, somewhere you traveled, how you spend a Saturday morning.

The photos should look like they came from different days, because they did. Different clothes and different places make the whole set more believable. A set she believes is what makes her comfortable enough to reply.

Group photos cost you twice. First, she has to work out which man is you, and some women will not bother. Second, if a friend in the shot is taller, better dressed or simply having a better day, she compares you to him without meaning to.

A pet works the other way. It is a warm detail about your life at home, and plenty of women like animals. One caution: use your own pet. A different dog in every photo makes her wonder whose dogs they are, and a small question like that is enough to make a woman move on.

OkCupid says captions help you show up in Discovery, and they do something for the woman reading as well. A caption turns a photo into a small story and hands her an easy thing to reply to.

Keep them short and specific. "Me at the lake" adds nothing she cannot already see. "Third attempt at this trail, first time I made it to the top" tells her you keep going and do not take yourself too seriously, and it invites a question.

Order matters as much as selection. The first photo decides whether she looks at the second one.

Lead with a clear photo of your face where you look relaxed and like yourself. Put your most interesting lifestyle photo second, while she is still curious. Keep the pet, the travel and the hobbies further down, where she is filling in the picture of your life rather than deciding whether to keep looking.

Photos decide whether she notices you. The words decide how she reads your personality, and on a site like OkCupid, where people read and write more than on the quick apps, the words carry real weight. A strong set of photos above a few vague lines about liking travel and good food still loses her halfway down the page.

So once the photos are right, give the rest of your page the same care. A few specific lines about your life, written the way you would say them to a friend, turn a woman who liked your photos into one who wants to write to you.