Digital Dental Photography

Digital Photography and Workflow for Dentists

Marketing with Photos

TheDentalWarrior.com & RevUpMyMarketing.com

by

[UPDATE] Since sometime in 2012, this manual is no longer in print.

I do not know if it will be available again.  Nor do I know of any impending updates.

I have known Dr. Mike Barr, of Boynton Beach, FL, for about the last 8 years through DentalTown.com, although we’ve only met once.  However, of all Townies, he has had one of the biggest impacts on me and my dental practice; in fact, he was also one of the guys I first remember reading on the subject of creative portrait photograghy.  In the last 2 years, though, his biggest influence has been through his The Complete Website Owner’s Manual for Dentists, of which I was just the 3rd person to buy one when it was released.

Dental Website Guru Extraordinaire

Mike relates that he started a dental website back in the late 1990’s, long before most people realized the power that the Internet would have in marketing our services.  Over the years, he continued learning and implementing, and for many years now, his website has been the dominant force for growth in his practice, even in an area that is heavily saturated with dentists.  As a FFS doc in a PPO/HMO-saturated area of Florida, his website has been the differentiating factor for him.  After years of dispensing valuable advice on website marketing on DentalTown, Mike finally decided to write a book, and what an amazing job he did.  So good, in fact, that Dr. Howard Farran called it one of the “Five Resources You Must Own”, and Howard does know a thing or 2 about what makes a practice successful!

My own personal experience with Mike’s manual goes something like this:

At the end of 2008, I’d had a website makeover for my Charlotte NC family dental practice, but I realized that – when I tried googling different search phrases – my website was still virtually invisible.  In the 5 years I’d had a website, I had probably generated less than $10,000 in total dentistry for all 5 years combined.

Then I got Mike’s manual in early 2009, and I set to work.  I fortunately did have the ability to edit the content of my website, and there were a lot of late nights spent writing and re-writing text, adding photos, links, everything.  Within a couple months, I decided to learn to write HTML and CSS and build my own websites with Adobe Dreamweaver, so by the fall of 2009, I had 5 total websites built and was optimizing them.

At the end of 2010, I checked my Referral Analysis reports, since we track incoming patients very carefully.  At that point, we were generating more than $20,000 per month in revenue from my websites!  Holy cow!

Now, there were other resources that I found, too, but Mike’s manual was THE foundation that got me going. I highly recommend you get it!

Dental Practice Rebel/Guru

Mike has always been a bit of a rebel when it comes to practice management.  He accepts assignment from no dental insurance, is not under contract for any PPO, has a practice full of 6MonthSmiles adult ortho patients, routinely does FMR and cosmetic dentistry cases, and all of this is in an area of Florida that is heavily saturated with dentists, most of whom DO take PPOs, assignment, and don’t do the kinds of procedures he does.  YET……Mike has made a great reputation for his dentistry in that environment, because he makes no bones about what he stands for.

Now Mike is starting a new website, in which he shares his passion for taking the “road less taken,” and making it work.  Given Mike’s passion and knowledge, you NEED to check it out and subscribe!

The Dental Warrior

 

 

Cosmetic Dentistry Portraits

by

Use Photo-Sharing Sites to Spread Your Pictures Around the Web

The portrait you see below (and you can click on it to see what happens) was posted directly from my photography website, which was actually the very first one I built, although not from scratch.  It is hosted with SmugMug as a Pro account for various reasons, one of which does happen to include ability to automatically watermark images in entire galleries quite easily.  There are certainly other options, such as Google’s Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, Zenfolio, etc..

This is just a short post to show an example of how you can spread pictures around the web easily, on your own, with no need for a web designer.  Simply create an account yourself (I do recommend setting up one specifically for the office, separate from any personal photo accounts you have), and upload pictures from your computer, then use the “Share” button to get your work out there for patients to see.  And really, the more places, the better!

 

Phaedra chose 6MonthSmiles to correct some mild crowding of her top front teeth, as she'd been self-conscious about them for years. Now she loves her smile!Phaedra chose 6MonthSmiles to correct some mild crowding of her top front teeth, as she’d been self-conscious about them for years. Now she loves her smile!

How Many Ways Does Lightroom Let You Use Your Pictures?

by

As I’ve discussed, if you can’t actually DO something with your pictures, then they become nothing more than nice documentation for yourself, possibly insurance, or possibly to defend yourself against lawsuits or Board complaints.  The real power of pictures, though, is in their ability to educate and motivate patients, whether in your office or out.  And this is where I find Adobe Photoshop Lightroom so helpful.  Just check out the list of ways you can output images from Lightroom (using my own example websites, social media, etc.):

social media photo publishing and sharing options within Adobe LightroomSocial Media Photo Sharing Options

While there is unfortunately no way to upload photos from Lightroom to Facebook Fan Pages (serious bummer, but you can work around it), you can set up Publishing Services for other social media sites, such as

  • Flickr
  • Smugmug (where I host my professional photography site)
  • Google Picasa albums (which you can link to your Google Places page)

This allows you to select a group of pictures and batch upload them with a single click.

Create Patient Slideshows, Custom Print Layouts, & Web Galleries

There is one feature that Lightroom currently lacks, and that is the ability to design photobooks directly within the software, and this is certainly something that would be terrific for dentists.  Aperture 3 and iPhoto, both by Apple, do have this capability built in; something we’ll hope for in future versions of Lightroom.  If you are an Adobe user, Photoshop Elements 9 has this capability.

However, in most popular programs now, you can select a group of photos and have them merged into a MPEG4 video, including music and captions, even a voice over explanation if you want to take the time.  You can create custom layouts for ortho, for lab communication, and printed pages to put in a 3-ring binder as an alternative to a printed photobook, and more.  And you can

DDS GP: The iPad “Killer App” for Dentists

by

Do you have an iPad?  If not, WHY NOT!?!?!?  😀

We got our iPad right after it came out in 2010, and I must say, it has essentially replaced my laptop for any time I need a computer but am not sitting at my desk.  There’s a darn good reason Oprah named it one of her Ultimate Favorite Things.

But for dentists, IMO, there is now a completely different reason for the iPad to become one of YOUR ultimate favorite things, and that is one particular app:  DDS GP.

Use Your Own Photos to Educate Your Dental Patients

One of the best features of this app, is the ability to add your own patient photos to individual presentations.  All you have to do is create a folder of pictures to sync to the iPad, and from within the app, select the photos to add to each presentation, with no limit.  So add Before/After Portraits — composites, amalgams, CERECs, and more!  Then put the iPad in your patients’ hands and simply WOW them!

%CODE1%

Customizable, Portable, & Easy-to-Learn for Dentists and Dental Teams

The DDS GP app currently has more than 200 different presentations, and more are being added regularly.  They include such procedures and diagnoses as:

  • Bleaching: In Office
  • Bone Graft with Extraction
  • Bridge: Porcelain, Anterior
  • Crown-Lengthening
  • Brushing: Bass Technique
  • Cracked Tooth, Cusp
  • Crown: CEREC
  • Invisalign
  • Nightguard: NTI
  • Veneer, Single: Porcelain, Lab

Affordable Dental Case Presentation Software vs. CASEY or GURU

Unlike Patterson Dental’s CASEY (which can run up to $8000) or Henry-Schein’s GURU (not sure, but I have heard about $2000?), DDS GP is truly affordable — only $399! No, I am not kidding, AND that includes free lifetime updates! No, I am not kidding about that, either.

Email Treatment Plans, Add Fees, Include the Presentations, & More

From directly within the app, you can create treatment plans and add presentations from the app, then send it right to your patient via email, or if you have a compatible printer, print it directly from your iPad.  This makes it easy for husbands or wives to show their spouses the same, easy-to-understand presentations that helped them make the decision to move forward on treatment.

2011 and LOTS of New Info Coming!

by

Happy New Year!  😀

I just want to say that I am very excited about this coming year and what will be added here for your use.  Since I will be lecturing on an effective digital photography workflow for dentists, that will be the primary focus for the next 4 months.  As a person with ADD, blogging is a great way of helping me refine my thought processes and the workflow itself as I put them into a format that should be easily usable for you, my colleagues.

Here’s a little of what you can expect:

  1. Video tutorials
  2. Portrait photography tips and settings
  3. How to use your photos in Social Media
  4. Creating website galleries and building online photo galleries
  5. Creating MP4 videos for your office and websites

While there is such a huge wealth of information to present, my goal is to make this stuff EASY for you, so you don’t have to go through the same learning curve I did.  😉

Where Do You Get Dental Website Photos?

by

A Townie friend of mine, Lisa Weber of ProductionFinder.com, recently related this story that emphasizes 3 extremely important points:

  1. Be sure that your website photos are legitimate,
  2. Why you should use your OWN photos on your website, and
  3. Take the appropriate steps to protect your photos.

I’ll be posting more on how to get your own photos onto your website in an attractive format, as well as on how to protect your photos (within limits) in upcoming blog posts.

And now, in Lisa’s own words:

I thought I’d post a recent situation because my guess is it’s more common than you might think. This will be long so bear with me.  This is what happened recently:

Client emailed me to inquire about my services and we agreed to talk by phone the following day.  I checked out the name online to see where the practice was and take a tour of the website.  A website can tell me quite a bit about a practice, so I usually pop into all of the pages.  I looked at the Smile Gallery and saw some very familiar smiles.

The images (all of them) were images I’d actually participated in taking in a practice I used to work in, and now work for on a consulting basis.  I knew the names associated with those smiles.  What are the chances of my stumbling on those images?  Pretty darn close to nil.  Before assigning blame to the dentist, I decided to check out the web designer.  I found 5 websites for dentists in that same area of Arizona using the exact same images.  There were a few additional images on several of them but the galleries were virtually identical.  That’s when I assumed the dentists were under the impression they were stock images and the web designer had been the one who had likely just copied and pasted them.  They were all small images, saved as jpegs with the different practices names,  numbered sequentially.

I saved an archived version of all the sites in question prior to doing anything and then called the web designer.  I was unable to get a person, so left a message and also sent an email.  I then began to contact their clients and tell them what the situation was, explaining that our assumption was that they had no idea those images weren’t available for use.  Each of the offices were able to get the images removed from their sites.  I searched again and found yet another dental website using them and contacted that practice last night.  Speaking with an incredible OM, I explained the history and that my only purpose is to get the images removed and we do not hold the dentist responsible at this time.  I explained that the web designer had placed her doctor in a very precarious position because ultimately it was his liability.  I recommended they pull out the original contract to see if the web designer represented that he had all rights to the images he was going to use.

After receiving my message that if I didn’t receive a call by close of business, I would rely on our attorney to make any future communications, I received a call from the sales person from the Web designer.  He stated that although he believed he got all the images from a Lumineer site, he would go ahead and remove them.  He said his business was no longer in operation, regardless.  I asked him if his clients knew this and he assured me that they did.  I mentioned that I had spoken with several dentists in the past week who would be very surprised that they were no longer in business.  I also mentioned that not only were the images not from a Lumineer site, but none of them displayed a Lumineer, since that is a product that neither doctor has ever used.  He seemed to feel it might be possible they were not the images I felt they were until I indicated that by “participating” in the photography, I meant I was actually in the room when those images were taken, cropped them and have them saved on flash drives along with a few thousand other images that I have been recently viewing for inclusion in the new website once it goes live.   Those Before and After images being shown in Arizona were born and raised in Middleburg Virginia.

Not only did this web designer copy and paste the images (from an outdated website) but they used the identical images in a competitive market for offices that were geographically close to each other!  One image in particular really ticked me off because it was probably the most beautiful after pic I have ever seen of an implant crown on a central after months of tissue development and a dead-on perfect shade and characterization match by the ceramist.  Those aren’t easy to do and was a testament to that particular dentist’s skill.   That after pic should have been earned, not copied and pasted.

So…..very long story….but…..I would strongly recommend that you verify that images used in your website (all of them) have clear records of having been obtained for your use, either by you or by your webdesigner.  This is likely going to be a bigger problem very quickly, and it’s only a matter of time till people run into a dentist who isn’t as reasonable as the one I worked for.  I feel like a detective this week, but I’m glad I stumbled on those pics, that’s for certain. I think the doctor that first contacted me is glad I did as well.

I, for one, am grateful that there are people like Lisa out there, who will do the right thing by both the dentists who were ripped off by their web designer, as well as by the dentist to whom the patients and photos belong.  Who knows how far those photos might have spread, were it not for Lisa’s vigilance.