A Short Introduction to Clinical Photography for the Plastic Surgeon

Photography is an essential part of plastic surgery given the visual nature of our specialty. Its uses are innumerable; it enables us to document form and function, helps us plan an operation, assists us in teaching, serves a medico-legal purpose and may even assist with research.1 This is by no means an exhaustive list. Yet, despite its indispensability to the proper practice of plastic surgery very few surgeons receive any sort of formal teaching or training in clinical photography. In this manuscript the author attempts to provide some of the theoretical essentials of clinical photography required to take adequate clinical images for the patient’s record