James Hayden, RBP FBCA, Vice President - BCA

Forensic Post-Mortem Photography and the Modern Autopsy

Lenses: Physics, Photography and Phorensics

Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI)

Perspective and Viewing Distance

Ethical Considerations in Scientific Photography

Do these topics in scientific photography sound interesting? Do you think there may be application to your own work? Do you think these are good topics for a BCA meeting? Would they entice you to attend?

How about:

Focus Stacking: When Aperture Alone Isn’t Enough

Imaging the Unseen with Digital UV, VIS and IR Technology

Utilizing Dynamic Range

Wireless Camera Control

Photos and Photogrammetry

Cross Polarization in Practical Environments

The first five talks mentioned above were all presented by BCA members at the 2^nd Forensic Photography Symposium in January of 2023, including the first one on post-mortem photography, which was the Keynote lecture by David Larraguibel. Gale Spring, James Hayden, Ted Kinsman, and Tom Vadnais all contributed their expertise to the other lectures. The second group above were all lectures from the same conference, presented by people who had (mostly) never heard of BCA before. As you can see, we have a lot in common.

BCA has always been a source of education and expertise for creators and users of visual communication media in the life sciences and medicine, but we are not the only source, and finding other opportunities to expand that vision is part of our ongoing efforts to support our membership and the field as a whole. Eugene Liscio, owner of ai2-3D Forensics, conceived and hosted the Symposium for the last two years, with plans to make it an annual international event. Hundreds of people registered and attended live or watched the excellent programming asynchronously through recordings. It included the lectures, of course, but also networking breakouts, vendor presentations, giveaways and a photo competition with prizes.

This symposium, and other opportunities like it, show that there are many others out there who run into the same issues we do on a daily basis. We can help each other, which is what the BCA is all about. We were pleased to offer our expertise and support to FPS 2023. We also provided two memberships as prizes in the photo competition. We would like to welcome the recipients of those prizes as new members in the BCA: Aaron Matson, Technical Lead/Forensic Imaging Specialist for the Forensic Imaging Unit in the Wisconsin Division of Forensic Sciences as a prize winner in the professional category and McKenna Campbell as a student winner. It is our hope that they and others from the conference, might be interested in finding a professional “home” in our shared interests and challenges.

Meanwhile, BCA will continue to develop new opportunities to help our membership grow and benefit personally and professionally. The next big event is BIOCOMM ’23 in May – our first in-person gathering since the start of the COVID pandemic. Although New Year is now past, this is still a great time to make a resolution to get involved by joining us in Santa Fe, offering up a presentation about your own work, thinking ahead to submitting images for BioImages in August, or getting involved to help us plan the next great event. Let us know how we can help.

James Hayden is the Managing Director of the Wistar Institute Imaging Shared Resource Center and the 2012 Louis Schmidt Laureate.