Why hair-loss/regrowth photos get a bad rep

Thanks to "ad choice" I get all sorts of "hair regrowth ads" like procerin, etc. and they feature so many horrible photos.

It's no wonder everyone calls bullshit on photos, because A, they can be photo-shopped so easily and B, they are so often not taken in the same light or with the same length hair.

Take Procerin's terrible "clinical study" photos here:
http://www.procerin.com/clinical-studies.html

First off, their study has a whopping 21 people! And then if you look at the photos, 2 out of the 3 have nearly no change IMO. Also, the man in the first set of photos (african american male) seems to have hair that is longer (note how it's bushier on the sides) overall length in his second photo.

My favorite though, is the second set of photos. They show the most "coverage" over what was a thinner spot, BUT his hair is clearly longer and the best part is that his head is also rocked further back (towards camera) so that his thinner spot is now rotated further down (if that makes sense). You can see how the hair at the base of his neck is now rolled over his shirt collar whereas before it wasn't touching his collar. So with longer hair and by tilting his head back, OF COURSE the small thin spot looks diminished - because we're not even looking at the same spot anymore thanks to shifting the angle of this guy's head!

I know, I know, of course Procerin is bull... but I see this stuff even in other doctors' sites with their HT patients. Even my own doctor who I used to get propecia from took photos and he didn't have a constant method of measurement either.

The first set of photos he took, I don't even have because they had a "camera malfunction" and lost all the photos there. i couldn't fucking believe it! No photos from when I started my journey? And then the pics from year 1 to year 2, at first seemed too show lots of regrowth, but then I realized something...

in my first pic, I had showered my hair and put product in it, so it was greased and closer to my scalp, and in the second pic I didn't shower that day so my hair was poofier, thus showing more coverage. Yes I blame myself for not thinking of that before, but live and learn.

Even Mr. Maliniak, who loves to come on here and talk about his method, has a fantastically sketchy photo on his site. It's cropped so you can't see any hair near the front of his hairline, just a mostly bald top, and then in his video he strokes his frontal hairline patch and says "I didn't have this before." Well how the hell do we know!? You can't tell in your first photo. Even if his method regrew all that hair, no one will ever know because the photo wasn't taken correctly.

Apologies for going on a bit of a rant here, but it's this kind of stuff which doesn't help us and also makes us dubious of any progress that others share. I personally have taken photos a few months ago and am doing so every month or so at a consistent rate so I can accurately log my progress.

It was easy to set guidelines, and honestly the hardest part about it was knowing that I was going to be taking clinic, unflattering photos showing evidence of me balding - something that is hard to cope with for all of us.

But guys (and gals) we have to do this, if we want to ever be able to really quantify visual results we should all be taking pictures, keeping the following guidelines in mind:

-Use the same camera (and/or lens)
-Shoot in the same room
-Shoot with the same lighting conditions (if your bulb burns out, replace it with the same WATTAGE, not lower or higher)
-Shoot the same duration AFTER getting a haircut (don't have your "bald" pic two weeks after a haircut and then your "regrowth" pic 6 weeks after a haircut.)
-Shoot with the same duration after washing/styling your hair
-Shoot with the same type of combing/styling of your hair
-Shoot from the same DISTANCE from your hair (this is a biggie)
-Shoot the same spot of your head, ie keep your head angle the same in all photos (unless you want to be like procerin dude #2)

Let me know if I'm missing something here, but I feel like this is the only way I know to have photos for myself that I can objectively look at to show progress. And keeping them consistent like this will be the only way they will hold up to scrutiny here if I ever share them. I think we'd all be doing each other a service if we had consistent photos that we could use for ourselves and to share with the community without having to worry about the inconsistent lighting or picturing issues.

Granted, I'm only a few months in, so it'd be crazy to expect results yet, but hopefully there's something to show in 2013.

Also, feel free to share other sites with laughable photos on this thread. It's so embarrassing when these "cure" sites tout scientific evidence and yet they can't even get the simplest data collection of taking photos done correctly or without tampering.

OK, done with my rant-slash-mission to ensure photo accuracy...snap away!

Well according to me,hair transplant can improve density to areas of thinness on the scalp and it is the solution to get rid of hair loss problem. However, the success or failure of hair transplant is determined by many variables; your cause of hair loss and age being the main concerns.

If you suffer from male pattern baldness and are still at a young age, it may be advisable to undergo hair transplant as soon as possible which would be very effective in your future.

alfred723 wrote:Well according to me,hair transplant can improve density to areas of thinness on the scalp and it is the solution to get rid of hair loss problem. However, the success or failure of hair transplant is determined by many variables; your cause of hair loss and age being the main concerns.

If you suffer from male pattern baldness and are still at a young age, it may be advisable to undergo hair transplant as soon as possible which would be very effective in your future.

Alfred, I'm not a moderator, but it seems to me that you are just spamming this site to recommend hair transplants. Please don't hijack threads to talk about unrelated topics. I started this to talk about photos, not hair transplants.

Thanks