1. Web Camera Placement
The correct camera position will provide a flattering image of you for your teletherapy session. Some camera angles can make you look really bad and distorted. When positioning your camera, do the following:
Camera Height: Place the camera at eye level. If you’re using a laptop, you may want to elevate the laptop using something like boxes or books.
Camera Distance: You want to correctly frame yourself in the video by being the right distance away from your camera. You don’t want to be too close or too far way. The ideal framing for teletherapy is to have your shoulders and entire face with a little room to spare around you. For most cameras, the distance would be about an arms length away.
2. Lighting
Your web camera will capture the best video when it has a good light source. Poor lighting will make it difficult for your patient to see you because the details will be washed out. When setting up the lighting, do the following:
Front Lighting: Light yourself from the front with soft lighting. Most lamps would suffice. Place a soft light (like a light with a shade) in front of you but behind the web camera.
Avoid Rear Light Sources: Light sources from behind, such as a window, will make you look like a faceless shadow. Avoid or turn off lights that are behind you.
Minimize Other Lighting in the Room: Other lighting in the room may create weird shadows. Turning off other lighting in the room will help you look better in your video.
3. Remove Background Distractions
When you are in a therapy session, you want your patient to stay focused. Look behind you and remove anything that can cause distractions.
4. Turn Off Other Running Applications
You only have a limited amount of bandwidth to stream data, such as your video over the internet. The more bandwidth you have for your therapy session, the better your video will look for your patient. Your computer shares your total bandwidth with other applications that are running on your computer. You do not want these unused applications to waste your bandwidth. Quit or turn off any application on your computer that you are not using for your therapy session.
Note: File uploading programs such as Dropbox and Google Drive run in the background and use a lot of bandwidth. Be sure to shut off those programs before starting your teletherapy session.
Want to learn about the best webcam to use? Check out this article.
If you have questions or other tips to share, please place them in the comments below.