Photography
Crime scene photography has some unique requirements. When there is a bloodletting scene, the basics are still required but special attention must be given to the bloodstains. The current means of documenting the scene include 35 mm (B&W, colour, and specialty film), digital cameras, and video (Hi-8, DV, and other formats). Each method has its pros and cons. Often the scene is documented using multiple methods. (Videography has been included here because it follows the same principles and provides crime scene images.)
There are three types of crime scene photos:
- Overall – wide-angle images (28–35 mm range) that capture the scene as it is. This type of image provides anyone who has not been in the scene a good overall layout.
- Mid-range – images taken with a normal lens (45–55 mm range) give greater detail than the overall shots. In the case of a bloodletting scene, the mid-range image could capture a single bloodstain pattern.
- Close-up – images taken with a macro lens giving the greatest amount of detail. For example, a medium velocity impact pattern can contain thousands of individual stains where there is a preponderance of small stains (1–3 mm in diameter) some of which require individual images.
Many times an analyst cannot attend a bloodletting scene, and must work from the crime scene images and notes of the person who attended. An appropriate sized scale should be in overall, mid-range, and close-up images. For overall images the scales should be parallel and perpendicular to the floor. This provides the analyst, and anyone else who looks at the images, a proper perspective on what they are observing. (Note: in some cases overall and mid-range images are taken with and without a scale.)
Read more about this topic: Bloodstain Pattern Analysis
Famous quotes containing the word photography:
“Too many photographers try too hard. They try to lift photography into the realm of Art, because they have an inferiority complex about their Craft. You and I would see more interesting photography if they would stop worrying, and instead, apply horse-sense to the problem of recording the look and feel of their own era.”
—Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870–1942)
“If photography is allowed to stand in for art in some of its functions it will soon supplant or corrupt it completely thanks to the natural support it will find in the stupidity of the multitude. It must return to its real task, which is to be the servant of the sciences and the arts, but the very humble servant, like printing and shorthand which have neither created nor supplanted literature.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)