\u2013 I'm afraid we don't have Instagram!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Okay, but on Facebook?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 We don't even have Facebook.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013 Ummm\u2026 ok. I\u2019ll call you back. Thank you! (phone disconnected) \u201c<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It's no secret that the rise of social media has changed social and professional dynamics, as well as human interaction, over the past two decades. With it has come a sense of validation that people and businesses were not accustomed to before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The truth is, These days, success is portrayed online, and if your customers can't "verify your existence" through sites like Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok, they are very likely to pass over and look for another provider. <\/strong>And these are facts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c361% of online bookings come through Instagram, 221% through Facebook, (BookedIn, 2019)\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c41% of booking services are found through social media, 29% are direct, 25% through recommendation sites and 4.4% through organic search. (BookedIn, 2019)\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What does it mean to have a social media presence?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n To simplify, it means having a website alongside an active and engaging presence on the most popular and relevant social media channels, such as Facebook, Instagram and\/or TikTok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We know what you're thinking! Keeping your viewers and potential new patients engaged and entertained in the dental business is no easy task. We couldn't agree more. The only way to engage them without having to spend a lot of time on the phone is to showcase what you do every day. That\u2019s right \u2013 we\u2019re talking about taking pictures of your work, arranging them in a harmonious design that aligns with your brand guidelines, and posting them on your social media profiles.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This now brings us to the main topic of this blog: how to take beautiful, scroll-stopping dental photos.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking into people's mouths isn't one of the most appreciated things anyone except dentists does. And since your main target audience should be your patients, we're here to walk you through the dos and don'ts and teach you a few tricks on how to take the best dental photos and put them together in an attractive "before and after" design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How does photography work?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n It is important to understandand why a photo will never show 100% reality<\/strong>. This is because What you see on your phone screen was captured and processed by your phone's camera (not you).<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Your phone's camera sensors capture metadata (light signals). The signals are sent to your device's processors and converted into a RAW file (raw, unedited footage), which is then compressed and exported to a format of your device's choosing (most often JPG or PNG). When this happens, all of your camera's parameters (brightness, exposure, highlights, shadows, contrast, saturation, etc.) are adjusted to a level that can be displayed on your device in a pleasing way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However: this means that, Since you are not the one who decides the parameters of the photo, the standard settings that your device\u2019s engineers designed for everyday photos will be automatically applied to each of your photos. Because the environment (i.e. lighting, hues, colors) is different every time you take a photo, they always end up looking slightly different. This is less than ideal in clinical photography for teeth whitening, as this can lead to confusion and patients and viewers can tell that you either photoshopped the photos or that it\u2019s not the same patient in the before and after photo.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n To maintain as much consistency as possible across all photos, you will need tomanually adjust all the mentioned parameters<\/strong> (brightness, white balance, sharpness, exposure, highlights, shadows, contrast, saturation, etc, etc, etc). Some mobile phones have these options already integrated into the camera, but others do not (it is interesting to note that iPhones do not have them). In this case, you can use a ProCamera application, such as: ProCamera:<\/p>\n\n\n\n It's a small investment, but it's well worth it: you pay 6 \u2013 10 pounds once and you have it for life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is why professional photographers always use RAW photos, because they want to have the freedom to decide what parameters the photos should be used in.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There are a few things you will need and need to keep in mind when taking clinical photographs:<\/p>\n\n\n\n enLIGHTENment<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the key factor for a good image. Lighting needs to be consistent to always capture good photos. You should avoid taking photos of the same patient in different surgeries or in different locations.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If you decide to use additional lighting, you need to make sure it is not too strong (like a direct flash) as this will cause strangely bright photos and can also cause shadows, which will be difficult to remove. You can use something that will diffuse the light (the cheapest thing is a piece of baking paper taped over the light).<\/p>\n\n\n\n MANUAL SETTINGS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Based on what we talked about in the previous category, white balance is the most important setting you should look to get right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n White balance<\/strong> is a setting that adjusts the color balance of the light you are shooting in so that it appears a neutral white. It is used to counteract \u201cwarm\u201d artificial lights with yellow tones or the cold light of a photo taken under a very blue sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Please notice how 3 photos taken one after the other, but with very different levels of white balance, can look drastically different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n PLEASE NOTE THAT THESE ARE EXAMPLES BASED ON THE LIGHTING IN OUR OFFICE, THE NUMBERS IN YOUR OFFICE WILL NOT BE THE SAME.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n And here's a representation of the same concept in a video:<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/enlightensmiles.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/DR.-DIPESH-PARMAR-1536x1536-1-1024x1024.png\")
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