Same light, same distance, same angles, dry hair and no product. Five photographs at fixed intervals are the only honest way to judge whether a transplant worked.
A before photograph taken under a ceiling light with wet, flattened hair, and an after taken in soft daylight with dry, styled hair, proves nothing about the surgery. Overhead lighting throws the scalp into shadow and exaggerates thinning; front lighting hides it. Wet hair clumps and shows skin, dry hair with fibre powder conceals it. Those two variables alone can manufacture a transformation with no grafts involved, which is why we shoot under fixed conditions and give patients the same protocol.
Front at eye level, a forty-five degree view from each side, a top-down crown shot, and a straight-on donor shot from behind. The camera sits at arm's length, roughly sixty centimetres, held vertically at the subject's eye height rather than above it. Hair dry and clean, no gel, no fibres, no hat mark. Same room, same time of day, same distance each visit. It takes two minutes and it makes the twelve-month comparison worth something.
Photograph on the day before surgery, then at month three, month six, month nine and month twelve. Expect month three to look worse than the starting point, because shedding is at its peak and this is where people panic. Month six shows thin, fine hairs. Month nine shows most of the density. Month twelve shows calibre, which is what makes hair look thick. Judging any earlier means judging an unfinished result and drawing the wrong conclusion.
Look for consistency rather than drama: the same background, the same lighting, the same angle in both frames, and a visible donor shot. A gallery with no crown photographs is usually hiding crown results, and a gallery with no donor photographs is hiding harvest patterns. A result photographed at month four is a preview, not an outcome, so ask for the month-twelve version of the same patient before you decide.
Yes, and clipped short. Donor damage is the complication that appears years later when you decide to wear your hair shorter, and a short-clipped photograph at month twelve is the only way to document that it did not happen.
Because transplanted hairs shed between weeks two and eight, and some existing hairs shed with them from the trauma of the channels. Density at month three is genuinely lower than at the start; it is expected and it is temporary.