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.
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.
NightRoller Game 
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