Photographs are uploaded securely before your appointment, not sent by ordinary email or text. That matters — clinical images are sensitive personal data and should not sit in an inbox.
How to take a useful one
- Natural daylight, near a window. Flash washes out colour and colour is often the diagnostic feature
- Turn off any beauty or smoothing filter, which some phones apply by default and which removes exactly the texture we need
- Take two or three: one close-up from about 20 to 30cm, one from further back showing where it is on the body, and one of the other side or limb for comparison if relevant
- Put something for scale beside it — a coin or a ruler
- Focus deliberately by tapping the screen on the area rather than trusting autofocus
For a changing mole
Include any earlier photographs you have, even poor ones. Change over time is more informative than any single image, and a blurry photograph from eighteen months ago can be the most useful thing you send.
The honest limit
Photographs are very good for many skin problems and cannot replace examination for all of them. Where something needs to be felt, or seen with a dermatoscope, we will say so and arrange referral.