Clinical photography is an essential facility to support the work of cranio-maxillo-facial surgical departments. This paper highlights the requirements to ensure the highest quality and consistency of photographs taken and provides a standardized set of both facial and intra-oral views that fit the needs of accurate digital photo-documentation in cranio-maxillo-facial surgery. Furthermore it gives assistance in the selection of equipment, archival storage and error avoidance. These guidelines have been approved in November 2005 by the Council of the European Association for Cranio-Maxillo-Facial Surgery and are to be understood as a proposal to all our colleagues in Maxillofacial Surgery.