Hair Loss Notes Serious evidence, plain language

How to photograph your hair

The month-zero protocol the guide keeps telling you to start. Updated August 2026 · Not medical advice

Photo protocol · month zero

Boring photos, taken the same way every month

The guide says photograph it today. This is the how.

Checked August 20264 min readAges slowlyTechnique rather than news, so it does not date quickly.

In ten seconds. Take one set today: hairline, parting, crown and both temples, dry hair, same light, phone at arm’s length. Repeat that exact set once a month, and judge nothing until month six, against month zero.

1 · Fix the conditions once, then copy them

Do this today

Photos only help if everything except your hair stays the same. Your brain lies. Photos don’t (if you keep the setup boring and identical).

Same light

  • Same room, same time of day, facing the same window or the same lamp.
  • Harsh overhead light one month and a soft window the next invents a change that is not there.

Wet or dry, pick one

  • Dry hair is the better default, and clean or day two. Choose one and keep it.
  • Wet hair reads far thinner than dry, so a wet month against a dry month tells you nothing.
  • No styling powder or fibres in shot.

Same camera, same distance

  • Phone at arm’s length, or propped on a shelf so the distance is fixed.
  • Turn off beauty filters and portrait smoothing.
  • Same parting line, plus something for scale.

2 · The four angles, in the same order

Same set monthly

Four shots is the whole protocol. Fewer, and you end up comparing different parts of your head each month.

  1. Hairline, straight on, chin level, hair off the forehead.
  2. Parting, from directly above, chin tipped slightly down, parted along the same line every time.
  3. Crown, top down, taken by someone else or with the phone propped behind you.
  4. Temples, left and right, at the same angle on both sides.

Retake anything blurry or differently lit: a bad photo is worse than no photo, because you will still compare against it. File each set in a dated folder, for example Hair / 2026-08-07.

3 · Monthly cadence, and when to read it

Verdict at six months

The cadence exists so month six has evidence to read, not so you can review every week.

  • One set a month, on roughly the same date. Set the reminder now, while you are still thinking about it.
  • No verdicts between sets. Volume swings with wash day, weather and mood, and that noise will talk you out of something that is working.
  • At month six, put the new set beside month zero, one angle at a time. That comparison is the answer, not the mirror.
What a good six-month result looks like: shedding has slowed, your month-six photos are hard to tell apart from month zero, and you kept one habit going. That is the treatment holding a line that was otherwise falling. Full reasoning: how to tell whether anything is working.
Bias angles
  • Clinic before/after: lighting and wet/dry hair often flatter results.
  • Your mood: bad day → harsher selfies. Stick to the protocol.
  • Filters & angles: social apps compress the truth.

Do this Take the baseline set now, set a monthly reminder, then build your plan and change one thing at a time. Timings are in what to expect, month by month.

If something feels medically urgent (smooth bald patches, a painful scalp, chest pain or swelling on oral minoxidil), contact a clinician rather than waiting on a website.