What Your Profile Picture Says About You
Having a great profile photo is always the goal. But what makes a profile photo great? Is it all about looks? Quality of your camera? Your pose? Whatever you're doing, elements of your profile picture are talking to your viewers subconscious mind. This "conversation" gives your viewers brains a lot of information about you and how they feel about you. Our brains make split second judgements about everyone we see. From how attractive they are, to likability, their intelligence and of course if we trust them.
-> Let's take a deeper look at how to communicate our best qualities to our viewers and get them clicking on our profile!
Squinching
You know the term! It means smiling and having the wrinkles show around your eyes. The true sign of an honest smile :) In general, having wide open eyes commonly denotes fear, whereas slightly squinted eyes portray comfort and confidence.
Under The Chin Shadow
When we are assessing a photo, our brains like to be able to clearly make out the characteristics of the face. Obvious right? Well as it turns out, we like to have the areas of the body clearly defined as well! This is why having a clearly defined jaw is pleasing to us, even making the person seem more likable! Get your contour kits out ladies!
Note: It may be a good idea to increase any already existing shadow in your photo using a photo editing tool. Turns out it's worth the extra work.
Smiling With Teeth
DUCKFACE BE DAMNED!! It’s smiling with teeth that really makes you look great! On Top of the research that has shown selfies (featuring our fave duckface) make us look unlikeable and weird, we don’t even look like ourselves when we do this in photos. So next time you have a camera in your face. Crack a smile..and show the world those pearly whites! You’ll look more likeable and approachable if you do!
PRO TIP: Laughing smile is the best for attracting attention and making yourself look fun and likeable.
Area Shown
When it comes to profile photos the area of your body shown counts! So, having a super zoomed in close ups of your face (or other parts of your body) are no good when it comes to grabbing attention or trying to appear likable to your audience. Remember what I said before about our brains liking being able to see clearly defined areas of the body? This comes into play here as well. Turns out profile pics of your head and shoulders are the best with head to waist a very close second, and full body last. If you WANT to only show a select (sexy of course) area of your body as your profile image, just make sure its clear and zoomed out enough that you can tell what part of the body we are looking at.
Editing
Less is best! LESS IS BEST. I love animal ears and butterflies too…but we all need to stop. You can still edit to look great! Just keep it to the realm of the realistic. Having oversaturated color in your photos has been shown to decrease likability of the subject shown. I think what we can take away from this suggestion is this: people are trying to connect on the internet and the internet can be a scary place. So showing people something they can relate to is key to sparking a connection with these people you don't really know.
-> The best advice i can give you is to take an honest look at your profile photo and ask yourself: “Would I click on this person?”
Ask a friend! It can be very hard to look at ourselves (and our photos) objectively. This is why it can be useful to ask a friend. I know they may pic your least favorite of the selections but thats because they know what we REALLY look like! Our photos of ourselves are just that, photos and dont truly capture how we look moment to moment to the outside world…especially selfies. So take a second to ask a trusted friend to choose for us. Even if we don’t agree, chances are the outside world will.
To see the science behind this article please visit -> https://blog.photofeeler.com/perfect-photo/
Love you bb
~ Your Cam Coach Nikki Night
