![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Nick-and-Shane-e1773680840501.jpeg\")
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNick Friesen and Shane White founded The Match Artist after witnessing White’s dating success. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNick Friesen and Shane White founded The Match Artist after witnessing White’s dating success. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The Match Artist<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s cuter in person.\u201d It\u2019s a line we\u2019ve all heard before in defense of a blurry, back-lit picture of a guy holding an upside-down fish as he\u2019s the subject of someone\u2019s latest talking phase<\/a>. It was the best option he had on his dating profile, and empathetic friends, having uttered the same words before, extend the benefit of the doubt.<\/p>\n It\u2019s true, statistically speaking, that men have a harder go on dating apps<\/a>. It\u2019s also true that men have fewer pictures of themselves than women. Correlation does not equal causation in statistics, but we\u2019re not statisticians, so we\u2019ll call that a direct relationship. And the dating app specialists behind Dallas-based company The Match Artist agree.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cDating apps are confusing and [daters] don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doing wrong,\u201d Dani Geary, dating coach at The Match Artist, tells the Observer. \u201cNo matter whether we talk to someone who is a Fortune 500 founder<\/a> or it\u2019s someone that\u2019s an Uber driver.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Match Artist<\/a>, founded by Shane White and Nick Friesen around 2018, was the result of an experiment between the two friends. White was single and not having much luck on dating apps. Friesen, a professional wedding photographer, was workshopping how to teach grooms to smize in pictures on their big day.<\/a> Friesen asked if he could test it out on White, and soon enough, the pictures were loaded onto the latter\u2019s dating profile and the results spoke for themselves \u2014 White is now married to a woman he met because of the pictures. The two realized there was likely a market of men facing the same conundrum: a lack of quality pictures prevented dating app algorithms from helping them meet the one.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Match Artist also serves women, which is good news for one staff writer at the\u00a0Observer\u00a0whose cheeky captions and suggestive one-liners hidden in their dating columns have gotten them no closer to finding their Big. However, men make up 80% of their clientele.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, The Match Artist has photographers spread around the country offering personalized photoshoots to help men put their best foot forward. Dating coach Geary joined as a liaison, offering ongoing assistance and support to clients as they navigate the ever-changing world of online dating.\u00a0<\/p>\n The shoots follow a basic formula so that clients have every kind of picture you could need for a dating profile: a selfie, a close-up smile, and hobby and activity shots, to name a few. An extensive questionnaire beforehand helps with planning, or what we in media call \u201ccreative direction.\u201d The sessions take several hours, and a seasoned photographer helps with posing, wardrobing, the works.\u00a0Services start around $3,000 but can go up based on needs.<\/p>\n \u201cMen are very rarely pampered because it\u2019s not socially normal to do so,\u201d Geary says. \u201c[They] get 4 to 5 hours where it\u2019s all about [them]. It\u2019s all about you and someone on your side, on your team, making sure you look good. That\u2019s something that really is important for men to experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Geary steps in to offer her two cents on which pictures (of the hundreds) are likely to work the best, and how to answer prompts in engaging ways. She requires the first picture to be a solo smiling shot. It increases right swipes by 14%. And while you\u2019re at it, take down the gym picture and swap it for something outdoorsy; she says they\u2019re 20% more effective.\u00a0<\/p>\n The team has had to re-strategize as algorithms change. What worked in 2020 doesn\u2019t work in 2026. High-res studio shoots don\u2019t resonate as much as a candid picture that could have been snapped by a talented iPhone photographer, says Friesen.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe are always pivoting with the times to get those photos that will consistently work on the dating apps,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n After many years, the team has dozens of success stories and lots of wedding gifts to buy. While match coaching seems like a last-resort option for men who you wouldn\u2019t want anyway, Geary says that\u2019s really not the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we noticed is 95% of our clients, they don\u2019t have a value problem,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re interesting, they have hobbies, they understand what they\u2019re looking for in a partner, they\u2019re intentional about dating and they\u2019re looking for someone that can actually show up for a date. They have a value communication problem. So it\u2019s not that they lack value, they lack that ability to communicate it effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n Geary said she\u2019s never had a client she couldn\u2019t work with. Yes, some men have unrealistic expectations at first, but she says abandoning hope in them would mean abandoning hope in love.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t lie to the men we work with,\u201d she says about encountering less-than-sweet clients. \u201cI will meet them where they are, but I don\u2019t lie because that\u2019s not productive in growing their skills. No one\u2019s ever broken, you just have to refine the skills you have.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n We\u2019re not hating if someone puts a little more effort into their profile. In fact, we\u2019re grateful to have a good picture we can send to the group that won\u2019t immediately be hit with the dreaded \u201cgirl.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nick Friesen and Shane White founded The Match Artist after witnessing White’s dating success. The Match Artist \u201cHe\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207091,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,103,824,11702],"class_list":["post-207090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-news","tag-photos","tag-sex-dating"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207090\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.dallasobserver.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2026\/03\/Jake-Before-And-After.avif\")
The Match Artist is taking men\u2019s dating profiles from drab to fab with drastic before-and-afters.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Rohit-Before-And-After.jpeg\")
Rohit, who is a client of The Match Artist, steps up his photos with a before-and-after.<\/p>\n