I am fairly slim: 185cm and 73kg.

Thank you all for your kind replies - it is much appreciated. My position is very similar to Foxglove's, so I really can't post anything identifying.

Heather's suggestion is an interesting one (and Heather's own thumbnail picture is very elegantly done) - but I like to dress smartly, so I suspect that what for some would be a "body" shot would for me be more of a clothes shot. Perhaps photograph with part of the face removed or blanked out? Hmm.

Oh dear. I am, I suppose, a not doing things by halves sort of person. The others are right that you can get perfectly decent video footage by somewhat simpler means; the single most important thing, though, is good lighting: plenty of it, and preferably from more than one direction.

(1) Use two or more cameras if possible, and cut together footage from each of them in post;
(2) mount the camera(s) on (a) tripod(s);
(3) make sure that the scene is well lit (ordinary indoor lights are only as fraction as bright as daylight, but daylight can introduce deep shadows; think about lighting carefully; consider the use of reflectors);
(4) if the video is to have sound, use a separate microphone attached to (one of) the camera(s) of reasonable quality - an electret/condenser microphone is highly preferable to a dynamic microphone; and
(5) if possible, fix the cameras' exposure and focus at the outset so that they do not refocus or change the brightness of the scene over time.

I hope that that helps!

A well-dressed woman. I can't resist a woman in a good hat.

Thank you for the replies. I rather suspect that merely stating that a photograph is withheld for professional reasons won't suffice for many people, although it would be interesting to know people's views on how such a thing (which is already in my profile, as it happens) would go down with them.

So, nobody has worked out any more sophisticated way of dealing with this?

This is, I suspect, a matter in which I am not alone. On the one hand, I should like to be able to use the dating function of this site; on the other, I work in a profession where it would not be the thing to be seen to have a profile here (not because of the specific content of this site, but because it would not be the thing to be associated with anything that is explicitly sexual in nature as some parts of this site are).

I can, of course, use a pseudonym, but having a dating profile without a photograph (and not of a cake, lovely as cake is) is not exactly a recipe for success.

Is there, a way, I wonder, that anyone else has found that one can reveal a photograph of oneself to specific people, rather than the world or even membership of this site at large, without coming across as weird or fake or otherwise putting people off as much as not having a photograph at all?

The usual protocol is for a gentleman to ask a lady out if he is interested in her.

This seems to be a very sensible universal test.