Professional paper

Basic Principles for Taking Extraoral Photographs

Sandra Anić-Milošević
Mladen Šlaj
Marina Lapter-Varga

Abstract

Modern dentistry, as a part of the complete therapy plan, includes the whole of the patient’s face. A photograph provides important visual reference for monitoring growth and developmental changes, providing the patient with a view of the changes and providing the therapist with credible visual material for teaching and research. The first component to consider is the technical aspect of photography. However, documentation of the treatment with pre-treatment and post-treatment photographs can be misleading if the features on one or both photographs are distorted. In this article the authors present the variables for frontal and profile facial photographs that should be understood and controlled if accurate reproduction is desired, such as: lens selection, camera position, subject distance and head position. Consequently numerous frontal and lateral photographs were taken with different head and camera positions in order to show their different contributions to the final picture. Using easily recognised facial landmarks, dental photographers can standardise frontal and lateral portraits for more consistent comparison, and by standardisation they could become valuable additions to clinical charts/records.

Keywords

clinical photography; standardisation

Hrčak ID:

676

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/676

Publication date:

15.6.2005.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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