When Should You Send Photos to a Match on a Dating App?

Usually not until she asks, and not before the two of you are heading toward a plan. Her first look at you is your dating profile, with its profile prompts and the pictures beside them, so your profile is meant to do the showing. If she asks for another one, send a single recent, ordinary picture or offer a short call. Once you have her number and a date in sight, sending one is just normal texting. Never send one she did not ask for.

By the time she opens a chat with you, she has already looked at your set and decided she wants to talk. That is why a request to send more pictures is a small warning sign about the set. It means the first round did not answer what she was wondering.

a dating coach's first fix for a man who gets no response is his photos. His advice is not complicated. Ask a friend who likes photography to take you out and shoot a couple of hundred pictures, and practice different expressions and poses while they do it. You will pick your best five from a big pile instead of settling for what happened to be on your phone.

He also keeps one photo in his own profile that is chosen to make her curious, an unusual picture that gives her something easy to ask about. It gets more comments than his best-looking shots. A photo like that does a quiet job. She asks you about it in the chat, so she is not asking you for more.

Take it as interest. A woman who wants another look is picturing the date.

You have two good answers. The first is one photo: recent, taken in daylight, in normal clothes, doing something you actually do. Skip the gym mirror and the shirtless shot. She is checking that you are the man on the page, and a plain, honest picture settles that faster than a flattering one.

The second answer is to move toward a plan and let the date be the answer. Something like "Easier to show you over coffee on Thursday than to dig through my phone. Are you free?" keeps the chat light and puts the next step on the calendar.

Some women ask for a photo or a quick call because they have been burned by fake accounts. That is reasonable, and a short call settles it better than a picture can.

What your app allows differs, and it changes. Bumble says you can make voice and video calls inside the app once you match. Hinge says it removed its calling feature, so a call there starts after you trade numbers. Tinder says it does not allow photos to be sent in a chat at all. Check what the app lets you do today before you promise her anything.

This is where photos turn into ordinary texting. A picture of the bar you picked, the dog she asked about, or the dinner you are cooking is the kind of thing two people send when they are about to meet.

Keep it tied to the plan. My texting advice is to bring up the plan before the closing text, so the invitation does not land out of nowhere. A photo can help with that. It should never stand in for it.

Never send anything sexual, and never send a picture she did not ask for. A woman who has agreed to a drink with you can change her mind with one text, and an unwanted photo is the quickest way to make her do it.

The same caution works in the other direction. Say someone you have just matched with asks for your photos in the first couple of lines. Or she pushes you onto another app, or brings up money. That is a scam far more often than an eager woman. Robberies and scams that begin on dating apps are reported in several cities. Never send money or identity documents to a stranger, and meet in a public place first.

If she asks and your phone holds only old pictures, group shots and dark bars, the profile is the real problem. Fix the set before you worry about the chat.

Take new photos in daylight, wear three different outfits, and shoot in two or three real places you go. Keep one lead photo of your face alone, in good light. When she asks for a picture, you will have an honest one, and the set she already saw will match it.