How to Take a Profile Selfie That Actually Works

What we see in applications at our London agency, and what makes the difference

The clients who browse this agency have seen many profiles. They form an impression from a photograph within seconds, and what registers in those seconds is not appearance alone but whether the person in the photograph looks at ease. Most of the selfies we receive in applications miss on this. Browse our escorts to see what a profile selfie looks like when it works.

Light first, everything else second

The most common selfie we receive is dark. Not slightly dim, genuinely dark, with the face unclear and the background brighter than the subject. The cause is almost always the same: a window behind the person rather than in front of her. Standing with a window behind you looks bright in the room but records as a silhouette on camera. Turn around. Soft, indirect light from a window on a cloudy day picks up the texture of the skin, brings out the warmth in the eyes, and produces a quality that editing afterwards rarely recovers. Direct sun flattens features and creates shadows under the eyes and nose that have nothing to do with how someone looks in a room. If there is no good window, reposition a lamp to face you before shooting.

Put the phone down

Holding a phone at arm's length lifts the shoulder, compresses the neck, and puts tension into the face. We see this in applications constantly. A phone on any kind of stand at eye level removes all of it. The posture opens, the face relaxes, and the result looks like the person rather than someone holding a pose.

Selfie cameras are wide-angle by design, which at close range makes features appear slightly distorted. Portrait mode on any current smartphone corrects this and is worth using as a default.

The background

Cluttered spaces, disordered rooms, surfaces that belong to a private life rather than a considered presentation: we see these regularly in applications, and they pull a viewer's attention away from the subject before she has had a chance to make any impression at all. A plain wall or a clean, uncluttered space behind the subject keeps the attention on the person. Spend two minutes on the background before shooting.

On filters and editing

Light editing is fine. Heavy filtering is a different matter. The clients who use this agency have met many women and notice very quickly when a selfie and a person do not correspond. A natural selfie taken in good light holds up to that in a way that a heavily processed one does not. The women whose profiles perform best on this site are almost never the ones with the most edited photographs. They are the ones where the light was good and the shot was taken enough times to find one that felt honest.

Take more shots than feels necessary. Fifteen from one session will almost always contain something that three will not. Most people stop too early.