Photography Purchase Review: Dating Unchained

This past November I booked a photoshoot with Joe from Passion Unchained/Dating Unchained. I had never gotten dating profile photos before, nor met anyone from online who had a place in the serious dating scene.

There’s going to be two parts to this: first, a minimally edited review I made after the photoshoot but before I received the photos, and second, a review I’m writing up today based on the impact and effects I’ve had from the photos.


Review Part 1: The Shoot

Joe is an artist, he works with what you give him. I came prepared, but some people might not take the advice for wardrobe necessities or practicing the facial modeling, but you get what you put into it. He does his best to make you look good, so make sure you’re looking as close to your best as you can–but even if you have an abrupt issue, he’ll help you work around it to show off your best side to the camera.

He showed me photos during the shoot, giving us both time to put input on poses, background, facial expressions, and more.

We had a debrief at the end of the shoot where we talked about some dating topics.

He helped me make sure I was feeling good about having done enough poses and photos before we finished. I do wish I’d written down the ideas I’d thought of before the shoot, to make sure I didn’t leave anything out we had the feasibility to do on the shoot day, but overall I feel like we leveraged the time and location very efficiently and hit all of my main desired photos.

The course of the shoot is not just a service; it’s an opportunity to get to know the photographer, while he gets to know about you and the camera learns about you at the same time. Joe’s a knowledgeable and connected guy and it’s fun to pick his brain. He also has a wicked sense of humor and deadpan delivery that went over my head a few times (I believed some pretty incredible things for a few seconds).

Joe knows TheRedQuest blog and has worked with Playing With Fire, which added some brownie points to him in my mind as I got to know him (I have a theory junkie side*). Worth noting, Playing With Fire is, in my opinion, one of the most detailed and comprehensive Youtube channels for contemporary online dating, and Joe has much of that knowledge and experience himself. It’s worth asking any nagging questions you’ve had about online dating while you have his ear.

I want to ask him how he works out and meets girls, because he’s traveling regularly and it seems it would be inconsistent timing to go to a gym.

He also goes really into the photography, i.e. expect it to be a several-hour shoot. I’m glad we stopped when we did, as I realized when we stopped that I was beginning to get posing fatigue.**

Joe has a good eye for the city. I wasn’t super familiar with the midwest city we met for the shoot in, but he found some awesome locations for photo shoots with several varied backgrounds within a 2 block radius (though we also visited a few other locations during the shoot).

*Had, now writing this post it’s less true as I take more action.

**Nowadays I’ve had more practice with the fundamentals, but I haven’t done any marathon photoshoots recently so can’t claim expertise.

An example picture Joe took of a client (included with permission)

Review Part 2: 6 Months After

With these photos, I can confidently say I’ve gotten 2-3 times as many likes/matches on dating apps than I did before, when I’ve had my dating profiles set up.*

Most of my Tinder profiles are photos from these shoots, with a few I’ve taken or had with friends thrown into the mix.

I’ve also been slowly using them on Instagram, and found them to be very effective there. I’d like to try my hand at Instagram Game eventually but don’t plan to get serious with it until I’ve built up my profile for a while longer. I get a lot of comments and compliments from semi-cute girls and some guy friends on social media from the photos.

They were relatively super-effective on the lower-quality dating apps like Badoo, Taimi, Hily, and a couple others I can’t recall, but they required so much effort to make it work (low-volume) and the girls on the apps were that it wasn’t worth bothering (too much of a time sink, almost like masturbation). With regular photos, I wouldn’t have gotten any luck on those apps.

The pictures have come in handy for several non-dating spaces as well.

Having these photos gives me more flexibility and a greater ceiling for the results I can find from online. I do think they were worth it, and I can tell that investing in the photos also showed me myself that I’m taking this seriously. I’m considering getting another photoshoot in the distant future, when I’m a little older and more muscular (going to improve abs and shoulders the next time I have a shoot), which will also show off some tattoos I’ve gotten since.

It’s difficult to just talk about the quality of the photos without showing examples, so keep in mind that if you’re curious (I won’t say which client I am, for obvious reasons) you can check out some examples of his photos here: https://www.datingunchained.com/transformations/.

*I have had several periods of the past 6 months where I got banned on Tinder and/or Hinge and it took me significant time and mental effort to go through the steps necessary to get back on them. I got 0 extra matches during periods when I didn’t put in the effort to use the photos by setting up a profile.

Another NightRoller FR log post, +2

Two new notches the week before this past week.

Met a somewhat cute but not totally interesting (and decidedly not hot unless her clothes are off and we’re having sex) girl from bumble. A facial deformity, but open to seeing me multiple times and wants to hang out more and likes having sex. I’m going to help her experiment and show her what having a good time with an empathetic sexy man can be like. I’ve seen her twice now. She tires easily, and I miss Seductress girl’s vivacity and hotness. Not something I expect to find until after I finish college.

Met a girl from the Fet app. I could tell she was a little chubby by her pictures on the app, but I didn’t realize HOW chubby she’d be until she showed up. It was almost a 3 hour drive, and I don’t respect myself or my time enough to say “no” to a girl who put that much time into driving over, so I fucked her decent, didn’t react to all the stuff she said about how it was disappointing I was leaving my state soon and how I’d have to visit her (I think she was trying to box me into doing it because she wanted me to, without directly asking me to), and then texted her a few days later that it was fun but I wasn’t feeling it.

Feeling too lazy to add it up exactly but I think this puts me at/over 25 lays all within the first 12 months of losing my virginity. At least half of them I would want to repeat if I could do it over again, and the rest were useful experience and encouragement to get better.

Hobby Game vs. Lifestyle Game

+ Drunk Friend’s Kiss And Another Hot Makeout

Typing this out half an hour before a date that just flaked due to “not feeling good” (a sorority girl, likely hungover on a Sunday morning).

A man can choose to live with game as a mere occasional hobby in his life. Maybe finding girls, seducing them, and bringing them home to show them his collection of “back massagers” is something he only does on weekends, or during a pre-determined part of his day that he dedicates to cold approaching.

But he might want more out of life. He might crave those kinds of spontaneous experiences that are memorialized in private journals and wet dreams and poorly-plotted high school romances, or feel he missed out on the “college experience”.

Game is a tool. It won’t solve every problem, just as a hammer isn’t going to help if all you have are screws, but it’s another useful skill in the toolbox.

In the past week, I had a couple experiences that I can recognize, without a doubt, I wouldn’t have been able to pull off just a year ago with the experience I had back then. (A year ago, I was still a virgin by this point, but as you can see from this blog I’d already gotten far enough into game to try cold approach.) Experiences that excite me, and fire me up to continue learning and practicing game, improving my logistics and confidence and ability to flirt, working out in the gym to build muscle, etc. RedQuest recommended I put it into a post, which I’ve been too “busy” (read: lazy, watching too much YouTube, unmotivated, etc.) to do until now.

This is living game as a lifestyle, and being open to possibility.


Hot Teacher from Dance Group

I’ve had a couple near misses from Swing Dance, but this one takes the cake and inspires me to keep learning Game:

A very cute mid-20’s teacher who’s been in the club for a while, who I learned just broke up with her BF ~a month ago, is friendly/bubbly to everyone and has super hips (and knows how to use them, at least in dance), and was seeming a bit extra friendly this past week.

I had asked her out before she broke up, and was hesitant to do so again because I misunderstood the timelines; I thought I’d asked her out when she’d already broken up, and was just using the old ex BF as an excuse. I’m not one to turn away potential signals though, so I used some extra touch during the dance lesson and verbal innuendos in conversation after the lesson (slipping in subjects like pulling hair, playing with blindfolds, light bdsm-adjacent stuff), and tested to see what happened if I announced I wanted to get water and left a group of guys crowding around her (I can tell she’s definitely popular in the club with the men, but so far few have actually made a move that I can tell. Most men are pussies, and I’d include myself in that category 50% of the time). She declared she would get water too and followed me. Bingo. Caught her before she rejoined the group, a bit of flirting and touch and letting her know it wasn’t just her imagination that she was hearing me drop hints about bdsm (she was gaslighting herself and saying “did I hear that right?” during the dance lesson and when in the group before). Let her know (uncalibratedly) that I liked her, and “cold-read” that she was into me (at this point, there were a lot of subtle signs, none of which I would have seen a year ago). Asked her out to coffee. She said she was very 50/50, because she doesn’t want a reputation for dating a lot of guys in the club or something. (This is completely understandable–for a decently cute/hot girl like her, it could be social suicide to let others know how kinky she is.) Still, “I’ll think about it” isn’t a particularly satisfying answer.

Then a friend showed up and had me join him and his GF to check out a cool hallway nearby that few people hang around despite the building itself being a high-traffic one, so after I returned from that trip, I invited this teacher who knows how to dress cute-yet-sexy to join me and check out some of the cool furniture and art up there.

Adventurously checking out a secluded stairwell -> stopping her on the way down -> saying she looked like she wanted to kiss me -> she gave a shit test about me not being good at kissing -> ” I’m 5 stars on Yelp” (adapted from a text for dating apps, by Playing with Fire) -> her initiating on me and giving me a kiss that had my lips and tongue tingling even after two hours. Fantastic, tongue-intertwining, finding our hips, hands roaming over each other, makeout.

That was up there, perhaps the best kiss I’ve ever had in my life. She guessed I was a dom, I revealed I’m a switch, she admitted she’s a switch and a little bratty (cool, I like a little banter), I went back down to dance while she said she needed to sit by herself for a couple minutes (she seemed a little overwhelmed after our kiss).

One small test I failed is when I suggested we turn it into a wine date instead of coffee, she said I just want to get another seed sowed (or some weird analogy), then instead of saying the truthful yet tactful “I want to make out with you” and being strong in frame (or twisting it to teasing the opposite (“no, I’m a total virgin” or, “I gave up sex for Lent”), or that she was the one thinking of sex and not me), I went logical and talked about how I like intelligent girls who are actually firecrackers underneath. May have lost her there, but I was amazed I got to escalate that far.

Another spectacular reference experience, alongside ones like my threesome and the fun times with Seductress Girl. Have her number, might turn it into something short term. Spicy spicy. Not a lay report, but really tempted to write it down wrote it in this post because I know even a year ago I wouldn’t have been able to take this chance and “not fuck it up” well enough for this outcome.

Afterwards, she texted me that she felt I’d come on too strong and she wasn’t interested any more. I had felt like the date probably wouldn’t have been solid either way, but I’d found this girl attractive for several months and it was nice to hear from such an attractive girl that I myself was attractive to her.


Drunk Friend’s Kiss

A longtime female friend of mine (of ~2-3 years now), who has been in a 2.5 year relationship with a guy (her current fiancé) who doesn’t really engage with her sexually or get turned on by her, wanted to go out and get drunk on a certain night because she recently made out with a guy who’s similar to her fiancé “but better because he gets turned on by me”, and then a couple days ago went with him in a hotel and f*cked him, and wanted to vent off steam/let it out. (I’d warned her it was difficult to maintain long-distance relationships, and she was looking at a surprise extra year+ before she could be with her fiancé).

I’d considered this friend to be pretty smart overall (I still do, just less so in regards to dating/knowing what she wants), and maybe an exception to the rule of how girls usually want an attractive partner and may switch if they find a better one because she’d lasted with this one for so long, but…

Three 12oz 10% abv beers for her and 1 6% beer for me later, we walked home, and she was a lot more tipsy than I’d realized. It was kind of fun to have the opportunity to keep us both from toppling over. I’d never been around drunk people (at least that I knew) before, and I like having the chance to be the responsible one in a group. If I had to do it every night it’d get old, but it was a new experience for me.

She mentioned several times how insecure she was with her body and how she thought I was cute but how she shouldn’t think I was cute, because of her relationship and how I’m “weird” (she’s known me too long/too many phases of my growth), and how her fiancé was upset because she had kissed the other guy (she didn’t tell her fiancé that she’d actually had full sex with the guy).

She mentioned, as we were walking along, that she said she wished I wasn’t so cute so that she wouldn’t want to kiss me. The whole time I was laughing and playing around with sarcasm and stuff (great practice and great fun for me, banter and such, when she was tipsy enough to laugh and not have good comebacks), and so I responded “I don’t think you could kiss me” and “you’d have to initiate it, and I don’t think you could do that.”

She said “you want to bet” and as I was proudly saying “yeah” and thinking in my head “no, I’m not going to initiate on her, she could lose respect for me if I did, and I don’t think she has the guts/initiative to do it anyway” she pulled me in and made out with me. (She really likes to be right and prove her points, and she sure got to prove me wrong in this case.) On the rest of the walk home, she forgot she’d kissed me at least 3 different times (and had forgotten by the time I talked with her the following day). More drunk than I realized.

I didn’t expect playing into reverse psychology “I don’t think you’d be able to do that” would amount to anything. Never expected to kiss this friend. Tried a bit of reverse psychology when we got back to our hall when she was claiming she could seduce me in her room and we were both mentioning we had condoms, I could have gone into her room with her under the pretense of making sure she got in okay and probably ended up having sex in the end.

But I decided because she wasn’t inviting me in, and because we’re (at least nominally) friends, and she’d helped me along the journey to become confident and attractive and been a person to bounce my thoughts and game learning off of, I’d pushed my luck enough for the day.

The longer I observe her, the more random she gets. After her fiancé leaves this coming week (started visiting yesterday in fact), I’m going to be the only guy she thinks is cute (but also “weird”, she kept insisting while drunk, so I bet there’s some objections to how I date) on campus (or even close to our state), so there’s a chance that in this last month we could end up f*cking (Edit: that was ironic accidental foreshadowing), even though she (when sober) insists she’s not interested in me and that she didn’t think I was interested in her.

I also didn’t understand that lots of chicks will cheat and for that reason it’s fine to take shots at married chicks or women with boyfriends. If she is going to cheat, I want to let her cheat with me!

RedQuest

I’m about half and half on it, because she is cute, but has been a semi decent friend and a good listener the past couple years. But she was one of the last bastions that had me questioning the validity of game and whether it actually worked/was true for a time. Recently I’d begun to consider her an outlier. Now, I know she’s not an exception at all, just a late bloomer.


Right place, right time, right amount of teasing and staying grounded. If I didn’t live game as more of a lifestyle, I wouldn’t have set up the date for today, I wouldn’t have had either of these kisses, I wouldn’t have ended up dating the Japanese GF, and I wouldn’t be planning to travel the world this summer.

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