Why a routine beats a snapshot
Hair grows only about a centimetre a month, and pattern hair loss changes over months or years, so the difference between two months is small. Light, angle and styling easily make a bigger difference than the hair itself. Clinics deal with this by taking standardized global photographs: the same views, with the same set-up, at every visit. A review of methods for measuring hair growth counted standardized photography among the most valuable tools, and a set of standard procedures for hair clinics recommends global photos at follow-up visits after three, six and twelve months. At home, the same discipline turns a phone into a fair witness.
Based on: Chamberlain & Dawber 2003; Baksanskaite et al. 2025; Canfield 1996
Set it up once
Pick one spot and keep it: by a window that faces you for the front photo, or in bright, even light from above for the crown and part, never a single spotlight, at the same time of day so the daylight does not change. Mark where you stand. Use the rear camera at its standard zoom, never the wide-angle lens or portrait mode, and switch off the flash, filters and beauty modes. Hold the phone at the same height and distance every time, or ask the same helper to take the photos; a phone stand and the self-timer work too. Write down the date, when you last had a haircut and anything new, such as an illness or a change of shampoo.
Based on: Canfield 1996
The three photos
Front: face the camera straight on with the lens at eye level and a relaxed face, push your hair back off the forehead with a headband or a damp comb, and keep your whole face and the top of your head in the frame. Crown: point the camera straight down at the top of the back of your head, where the swirl is, with your hair dry and combed the way you usually wear it, and let the crown fill most of the frame. Part: part your hair where you usually do and comb it straight, then hold the camera above your head so the part runs from the top of the photo to the bottom, with your forehead at the top edge and the whole part in view.
Hair, timing and the small stuff
Photograph dry hair, without gel, wax, oil, dry shampoo, fibres or tinted sprays, and not straight after taking off a hat. Wet hair clumps into strands and shows far more scalp, so never compare a wet photo with a dry one. Try to take your photos at the same point in your haircut cycle, because a fresh short cut uncovers scalp that longer hair covers, and note any change of colour, since dye changes the contrast between hair and scalp. Shedding can rise for a while a few months after an illness, a high fever, childbirth or a stressful period, so a note in your log explains a dip later.
Based on: American Academy of Dermatology
Reading your photos honestly
Put each new photo next to the first one of the series, not just last month's, and look at the same areas in the same order: each temple corner, the middle of the hairline, the crown, the part. One odd photo is usually the light, not your hair, so wait for a trend across three to six months. Be wary of your own eye: in one study, men's ratings of their own hair loss matched trained observers only about half the time, and specialists rating the same photographs often disagree by a stage. Consistent photos make those disagreements smaller, and they give a dermatologist something real to look at.
Based on: Taylor et al. 2004; Guarrera et al. 2009
Let the check do the measuring
The free GlowUp Face check reads front, crown and part photos with the same method every time, gives a range with a confidence level, and tells you when a photo is too dark, blurred, tilted or full of glare. After a check, choose Track this monthly to save the measurements to a private tracker without an account: it charts each measure over time, can email you a reminder about once a month, and can keep a black-and-white copy of your latest crown or part photo to help you line up the next one. Front photos are never kept. Keep your own originals in a private album.