Seeing the Big Picture

When we're thinking in a big-picture manner, we don't get bogged down in the details. Instead, we're clearly focused on the goal. In dentistry, a dentist who is a big-picture thinker is highly motivated to improve a patient's smile, gets excited about the end result, and is able to relate to the emotional aspect of a patient's transformation.

However, dentists are typically detail-oriented people by nature, which is often why we choose to enter the profession in the first place. It's not our fault; we obsess over the minutia so that we can pass the board exams. Just as we measure film thicknesses in microns, we tend to measure success and failure in millimeters and micrometers. Therefore, it's easy for us to become disconnected from the big picture—the ultimate transformation that our restorations will achieve to positively and profoundly improve a patient's life.

I believe that a successful cosmetic dentist needs to be both a big-picture thinker and a detail-oriented professional. I apply this thinking when I use my camera. Everything that I do from the beginning of a patient's case to the end contributes to the goal of making his or her teeth and smile look good in front of my camera's lens in all postoperative photographs. I regard the set of photographs as a celebration of results that serves two critical purposes. First, it reinforces patients' decisions to invest in themselves, and second, it helps to build a practice that is full of people who love to express their new smiles.

In our industry, the use of macrophotography has peaked; it saturates social media and keynote presentations. In fact, many keynote presentations have become as much about fancy macrophotography as they are about the learning objectives in their bullet points. Subjects without the latest diffused macrophotography lighting now look outdated in presentations, and macrophotographs are losing their effectiveness because the modified lighting that once looked special has become standard.

The photographs that we use should inspire us as dentists. As well done as it can be, macrophotography doesn't reflect the big-picture vision of how a new smile makes a patient look and feel. Lifestyle photography is more appropriate because it is more expansive and dramatic and unique to every dentist and patient.

Dentists love the macro lens because it gets them closer to the details, but I can see the esthetics of dental photography moving toward capturing shots of people enjoying their smiles in their own environments, not in dental practices. They've been transformed by their new smiles, and they can be seen expressing their newfound confidence in surroundings that are familiar to them.

I advise dentists to set up the expectation that patients will look and feel better from the beginning. We can say to patients, "I will improve your smile, and then I will take amazing pictures of you at the beach (or whatever location the patient desires)." This is our big-picture thinking, delivered through beautiful custom images.

If you want to really change and increase treatment acceptance, get a little sand between your toes and take photographs of your patients' smiles on faces that look natural. Make lifestyle photography your focus. Lifestyle photography lends itself to current social media trends by presenting as self-portraits and moments that are captured by people who are looking their best and sharing the experiences that they love.

What motivates patients to improve their smiles? It's not the details of the dentistry; it's the big-picture result and how they will look and feel afterward that is persuasive. So, to be a big-picture thinker, start taking natural photographs of patients who look amazing living their lives with their beautiful new smiles and make them immediately ready to share on social media. Certainly, keep your eyes on the details, but begin every case with the patient's big-picture result in mind.

Jason Olitsky, DMD, is an accredited member of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry and maintains a private practice in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.