How to take progress photos

Why photos beat the mirror

You see your hair every day, so slow change is almost invisible. And your mood plays tricks: on a bad day the same hair looks thinner. Bathroom lights from above also make thinning look worse, especially at the crown.

Treatments for hair loss take months to show.¹ Without a fair record, it is easy to give up on something that is working, or to keep paying for something that isn't. A set of photos taken the same way each time solves that. It is also the most useful thing you can bring to a doctor.

Keep three things the same

1. The light. Pick one place and one kind of light and stick to it. The best option is even daylight from a window in front of you, not overhead light and not direct sun. If you can only do it in the evening, use the same lamp in the same position every time. Turn the flash off: it flattens the scalp and makes hair look thinner.

2. The angles. Use the same positions every time:

Photo	How
Front	Face the camera, hair pulled back from the forehead, camera at eye level
Left and right temples	Turn your head 45° each way
Top	Camera above your head, looking down at your parting or the middle of the scalp
Crown	Camera above and behind, looking down at the back of the head
Parting	For women: a centre parting, photographed from above

A second person makes the top and crown shots much easier. If you are alone, use the timer and a second mirror, or prop the phone on a shelf above head height.

3. Your hair. Photograph dry, clean hair without any products. Wet hair clumps and shows much more scalp. Brush it the same way each time. If you cut your hair short, note it, because length changes how full it looks. Try to take photos at the same point after a haircut.

A simple routine

Before you start a treatment, take the full set. This is the photo that matters most.
Every one to two months, take the same set, same place, same light.
Name or date the photos so you can find them, and keep them in one album.
Write down what you were using and anything unusual, such as an illness, a new medicine or a stressful month. Shedding often follows a trigger by two to four months.²

How to compare

Put the first photo and the latest one side by side, the same angle each. Don't scroll through every photo in between; small differences from day to day add noise.

Look for:

how wide your parting is
how much scalp shows at the crown and on top
the shape of the hairline at the temples
fine, short hairs, which can be the first sign of regrowth

At six months, "no worse than when I started" is often a good result, because without treatment pattern hair loss tends to progress.

A note on other people's photos

The before-and-after photos you see online rarely follow these rules. A change of light, a wet versus dry scalp, or a different hairstyle can make a dramatic difference on its own. Read what results really look like to learn how to spot it.