Your first photo is doing most of the work

Everything below about profile photos comes from what actually happens rather than from what is supposed to.

One image carries the decision

Swipe interfaces show a single lead photo, and a large share of users never open the profile at all. That makes the first image not the best of your photos but the one that most reliably communicates a face and a mood in isolation. Group shots first are the common error, because the viewer has to work out which person you are and frequently does not bother.

Sunglasses, distance, heavy shade and motion blur all fail for the same reason: no face, no decision.

Lenses lie at close range

A phone camera held at arm's length exaggerates whatever is nearest to it, which is why close selfies enlarge noses and narrow ears. The same face photographed from two or three metres with a slight zoom looks markedly different, and more like the person actually looks.

Asking somebody else to take the shot from a short distance away solves this in one step and costs nothing. This is a well-understood property of short focal lengths rather than an opinion about selfies.

Light does more than any filter

Overcast daylight and the hour after sunrise or before sunset are flattering because the light is soft and comes from a low angle. Overhead indoor lighting produces shadows under the eyes that read as tiredness regardless of how you felt.

Heavy editing, skin smoothing and beauty filters are widely recognisable and set up a mismatch at the first meeting, which is the outcome you least want. A slightly imperfect honest photograph outperforms a polished misleading one at every stage after the swipe.

Order the rest by information

After the face shot, the useful sequence is a full-length image, then two or three showing what you do with your time and who you are around. Each photo should add something new; four near-identical shots from one afternoon tell the viewer almost nothing. Photos that need a caption to make sense — an in-joke, an obscure costume — belong later, where somebody already interested will read them.

Six is usually the ceiling before you are repeating yourself.

What quietly reduces trust

Photos that are visibly several years old, cropped-out partners, mirror shots of an untidy room and pictures with another person's face blurred all raise questions rather than interest. So does an entire set in which you are wearing sunglasses or facing away, which reads as concealment even when it is not.

Holding a fish, a sedated tiger or somebody else's expensive car has become an in-joke on every platform, which is a reason to reconsider it. None of these are moral failings; they simply cost you attention you did not need to lose.

Every relationship is its own thing, and general advice only goes so far.

Test rather than guess

People are poor judges of their own photographs because they see themselves mirrored and know the context of each shot. Asking two or three friends to rank your set, without telling them your preference, reliably surfaces a different order. Some apps offer built-in photo testing that rotates the lead image and reports which performs better, which is the only real data available.

Changing the first photo is the fastest experiment you can run on a profile that is not working.

The takeaway

One clear, well-lit, recent face shot in daylight, taken by somebody else. Everything after that is detail.

The right person will not need you to be strategic about it.