Other opportunities
What else can you, a budding dating photo photographer, do to get the most out of this emerging market? What follows are a few recommendations that can make your life much easier.

1. Maintain a completely digital workflow. Shooting film will dramatically increase a your cost and man-hours.

2. Shoot at the lowest resolution possible for your camera. Because of the technical specifications for dating portraits you will find that you do not need the top-of-the-line professional digital camera. You can take advantage of the low-cost of older digital cameras when providing online dating portraiture to your clients.

3. All online dating portrait shoots should actually be looked at as two distinct photo shoots. The first shoot is to capture a color digital headshot for the online dater's primary photo. The second is to capture a series of secondary images that can be described as casual or natural. If you have the ability to shoot in natural light, using natural light for the secondary images is preferable.

4. The optimum final output for the online dating portrait is: 72 DPI, no more than 500 pixels high, portrait orientation, shot on a white or light colored background with well balanced lighting.

All in all, the online dating phenomenon offers a terrific opportunity for digital photographers. An understanding of digital photographic techniques coupled with technical and retouching ability will allow a photographer to provide the very best service to online dating clients.

Remember, offering your service to the online dating market is an excellent way to promote your talents and studio to a much wider audience. Joining a network of online dating photographers can help you to get greater exposure and eliminate the burdens and headaches of client scheduling, billing and support.

Welcome to this exciting new market!

Gordon Gooch is the Founder and President of Datingheadshots. In this role, he is responsible for overseeing and developing one of the largest independent photographer networks in the U.S. Gooch founded Datingheadshots in 2002, combining his love of photography with his business and technology background.