Why photography is important to dentistry?

I always have taken pictures of patients in my office, but lately my photographic skills have gotten better. I took a weekend course given by Michael Soloway,  dentist extraordinaire, who has teaches a course on how to photograph patients mouths in order  to capture high quality pictures, both intra and extra oral. He and his colleague, Michael Ricciardi, help the attendees optimize the settings on our digital cameras, learn how to take a standard set of intra-oral photographs and how to "groom" them afterwards when loaded into our computers.

I took the course last year and I now take more before photos than ever of my patients who are getting a cosmetic consult or need treatment on their anterior teeth and also take photos to document the progress of their treatment as well.

I find that as I build up my library, these pictures can be used for presentations to my study club as well as for teaching purposes for my patients. It is especially reassuring to my patients to see that I have successfully treated cases that had problems similar to their own.

Recently I reached out to Dr. Soloway to see if he had an interest in giving a short presentation to my study club. He responded that he was at a conference in Dallas, but didn't I know he had retired from Dentistry(or at least was on a hiatus)? I asked what was the conference he was attending for and he responded that he was asked to attend to give a performance on his accordion. Wow, I knew Michael was a man of many talents, but I didn't know about his musical skills. I guess he truly is a real renaissance man!

from Ask Dr. Spindel - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/2018/03/why-photography-is-important-to.html - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/

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