Click to Enlarge Datingheadshot's Gordon Gooch agrees that clients don't care whether the photos look like they've been made professionally. Although Datingheadshots, like Lookbetter, instructs its photographers to avoid making portraits that look "like some classic high school pose," Gooch says clients tend to prefer a more professional look.
"Invariably they will choose a very good studio headshot over the ones that are outdoors or more 'natural,'" he says. What really matters, though, is the overall quality. "The most important photo for an online dater is the initial or the primary profile photo" that "makes or breaks the deal," he says. "Whether that shot is in a studio or outside or in a bar doesn't matter. What matters is the quality of the photo and the fact that the photo conveys the essence of the subject."
"Welcome to my office," Melody said, waving me into a YMCA on 63rd street. We found an empty table in the seating area, and Melody set up shop. That is, she removed her Canon 20D from around her neck and propped it against my bag on the tabletop. She showed me how to spin its dial to view the images and pulled out a napkin. I gave her a pen. "Go on through," she said, "and call out the numbers of anything you like." We looked through the pictures together -- she periodically commented on a shot she especially liked, and I periodically wrinkled my nose at the ones I didn't. When we finished, about 50 numbers were on the napkin. My package only included 12.
Lookbetter encourages its photographers to upsell, which means that when I hesitated while narrowing down my selections, Melody suggested I buy a CD of all the shots for $90. Upselling is a good opportunity for photographers to make extra money -- Zvonar said her clients end up buying additional photos 90 percent of the time. But it also puts pressure on the customer; I'd already paid $149 for the 12 photos included in the Lookbetter package, and after making a personal connection with Melody during our shoot, I felt guilty telling her no (although I did it anyway).
At Datingheadshots, photographers are not allowed to offer anything beyond the 50 or 100 pictures the customer has already purchased -- but they are always encouraged to give out business cards and to inform clients of upcoming specials. "We're hoping our photographers connect with online daters," Gooch says.
The potential for repeat business, the opportunity to fill dead studio time, and the chance to connect with people are just some of the reasons photographers are delving into online dating portraiture. "I always try to pull the positive out of the person," says Michael Slaughter, who does mostly advertising and editorial photography but shoots for Lookbetter on the side. Based in Itasca, Illinois, where the online dating population is less than huge, Slaughter averages 20 shoots a year for the service. "If I had to rely on Lookbetteronline to keep me in business, I wouldn't be," he says. "But I happen to love what I do."
A couple of days after my shoot with Melody, I got an e-mail telling me my photos were available for download. I was disappointed to see that I had hair in my face in one of the pictures, but I was happy with a majority of the shots. "I think it's important to have a friendly, natural picture that just happens to be professionally done," Melody had told me, and that's exactly what she had produced.
So now I have a great set of profile pictures... but I've yet to see concrete results online. Since posting the new shots I've gotten a lot more "winks," but the quality of my suitors has failed to improve. At least now I am confident that potential matches are not making their judgments based on a digital snapshot of myself at a bar, with my friends crudely cropped out of the photo. Instead, online daters now reject me at my most attractive.
I probably won't be contacting Melody for wedding photography anytime soon, but it does feel good to know I'm putting my best face forward.
Christina Bryza is a Manhattan-based writer with a journalism degree from Northwestern University. She persists in dating and can be reached at c.bryza@gmail.com.
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