How Should You Take Photos for a Virtual Consultation?

Hi everybody. We're going to make a video talking about the kind of pictures that I expect to receive from patients who are requesting Skype or FaceTime consultations, long-distance consultations. These are typically international patients or long-distance patients within the United States. We initially start with photographs, and then we do a Skype or FaceTime consultation, where I review the photographs, see the patients on the iPad and then go from there.

The photos that we get are very valuable, and it's important for photographs to be standardized. You want to be able to compare apples to apples. For example, if somebody sends a picture that's too zoomed in, or if their face is turned too far up or too far down, it can artificially make the nose appear a certain way, when in real life, if I saw them in person, it may not be that way.

So let's review photographs. The first thing is, I want photographs that are similar to my photographs on the website. If you look at the zoom level, you're showing from the top of the head to basically the bottom of the neck or the upper chest. That's what you need to be focusing on. You don't want to be showing the entire body, but you don't want to be too zoomed in on the face either. You see that on the front, and you see it on the profile.

Now, when you look at the head position, it's very important for the head to be parallel to the ground. You don't want the head artificially tilted up or artificially tilted down, because, as I mentioned, that can make the tip of the nose seem droopy or too piggish, when in fact it may not be. So it's important for the face to be level with the ground. There's a thing called the Frankfort horizontal plane. You can Google that and read more about it, but basically it's about keeping the face level.

The other important thing is that most people these days take pictures with iPhones or Android phones. You don't want to be too close to yourself. The closer you are when you take a selfie, the more it's going to blow up the middle of the face. The nose will look gigantic, the ears get swept back, and it's very distorted. The small lens on a camera phone creates optical distortion. That's an important fact. When I use my own camera to take pictures, I use an SLR camera with a macro lens, which is true to life, or a portrait type of lens. But phones can have a lot of artifact.

To reduce artifact, you want the camera to be as far back from you as possible. Don't take a selfie up close. If you have nobody else to take the picture, extend your arm as far as possible to get as much reach as possible. But ideally, you want to have somebody else take the picture. They can use your phone and take it from at least six feet away. The farther the lens is from your face, the less distortion is going to get created. At that point, you want to zoom in. You don't want it to be six feet away and showing your entire body when I'm trying to focus on the nose. So six feet away, and then zoom in using the camera's or the phone's zoom.

Again, keep the face level, keep the camera as far away as possible, and then zoom in and show me what I need to see. That way, I can actually judge the nose for what it is. Because if there's optical distortion, if the head position is distorted, then we're basically talking about something that's not really there, and when I see you in person, that plan may change. So let's have the best photographs possible, and then we can have a fantastic FaceTime or Skype consultation. We can compare apples to apples, come up with a surgical plan, do a rhinoplasty and give you a beautiful result. I look forward to seeing you in person. Thank you.