Police Photography Careers
Police photographers are accomplished technicians who use their cameras to gather evidence, document information and solve crimes. The images they produce are used in courts, so they have to meet stringent standards so that they can be admissible as evidence. Organizations like the American Institute on Applied Science concern themselves with policies and procedures that police photographers use every day. One contemporary concern has been the transition in the photography industry to digital cameras. It has forced adjustments in the the rules governing images used in court.
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Identification
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Police photographers are highly specialized photographers. Not only does their training include photographic techniques, laboratory procedures for developing film, and specialty subjects like infrared, ultraviolet and laser photography, it also includes legal training. Their work includes luminol photography, mug shots, other portrait photography and surveillance photography. Surveillance photography is used to document a crime in progress and to gather evidence that the investigating officers can use to obtain a search warrant. Police photographers even learn how to use their cameras to record impressions left behind at crime scenes, like fingerprints and footprints.
Function
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Police departments rely on photography for two main reasons. First, photography is an investigative tool. When a crime has been committed, police photographers use their skills to document the evidence before anything is removed from the scene. Various specialty photographic techniques, tools and filters can even capture images of things that are invisible to the human eye. Police photographers also use their cameras to record data accurately and quickly. This can be as simple as a mug shot that is then entered into a national database or as intricate as the magnified DNA from an offender or a victim using a camera attached to a forensic microscope.
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Considerations
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Police photographers must respect some basic rules in order for their pictures to be acceptable in a court of law as evidence. First, the photographer must never disturb a crime scene. Second, the photographer should take a series of shots using various camera angles: an overview distance shot, a shot at mid-range and a close-up. Rather than attempt to frame the picture artistically, the police photographer should shoot most of the pictures from what would be an average adult's eye level.
Expert Insight
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Even after these rules have been followed, in order for a photograph to be admissible as evidence, the picture has to be ruled to be relevant to the court case. It also must accurately portray the circumstances of the crime. Finally, it must be construed to be authentic by the sworn testimony of witnesses. The police photographer will often attend court trials to testify about making the pictures.
Prevention/Solution
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When a police photographer uses a film camera, the standard protocol is to keep all of the negatives along with the developed images. Since digital cameras are quickly replacing film as the photographer's choice tool, different issues have had to be addressed. Digital photographs preserve evidence in two separate ways: as an image, and as computer data. Both the code and the image are important because a digital photograph can easily be modified using software, which could invalidate it as a piece of evidence. For a long time after digital cameras began to be popular, digital images were not always admitted into evidence because of the potential for altering the picture on a computer. Police photographers must now understand how to use photography software in addition to all their other skills.
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