Category: Legal Photography

Photographs of collision sites in most intersections, or in residential or commercial areas, will have recognizable elements that orient a viewer to that area. Conversely, many stretches of rural roads, interstates, or other limited-access highways have few, if any, distinctive features. While it will be assumed that your photos show the road where the wreck occurred, without visible landmarks, it may be difficult for viewers to relate to the area. Signs, bridges, guardrails, and other roadside objects can be helpful—but only if you include them in your photographs.

As an example, the top of a fireworks store is partially visible at the top of the image below, but it isn’t visible enough for a viewer to determine where this photograph was made. [Click on photograph to enlarge, then click on Back arrow to return to this post.]

By the way, this photograph was made for two purposes. First, it showed the roadway in the direction the accident vehicles were coming from. Second, it showed an oncoming vehicle as it crested the hill (vertical curve) on the approach to the area of impact to give a sense of the sight distances involved.

While the fireworks store is a partial clue, the timing of the tractor trailer in the above photo obsured an exit sign, visible below, that would definitively place where the photo was made to someone generally familiar with the area. [Click on photograph to enlarge, then click on Back arrow to return to this post.]

Unless you intend to depict the effect of obscuring an element at a site, which sometimes you may wish to do, it is worth making a habit of reviewing your images while you’re still in the field to ensure you haven’t accidentally masked an important feature you meant to show.

Five takeaways:

-1- You should make photographs of the approach to a wreck scene to establish where the vehicle or vehicles came from.

-2- If a hill, curve, tree line, building, etc., obscures the view of an approaching vehicle, in any direction, you may want to capture the view both without any vehicles and then with a vehicle just coming into view to assist in visualizing the visibility distance.

-3- Especially on a rural road or on a limited-access highway, photographs including signs or other roadside features can help a viewer relate to where the photo was made.

-4- You can time your photographs so that passing vehicles will or will not obstruct certain roadside features at an accident site, depending on what you are trying to illustrate in each photo.

-5- You should include unobstructed permanent roadside objects in at least one photograph so you won’t be embarrassed by failing to fully document a wreck site.

Where you place your camera determines the relative positions of objects in your frame. It’s important to be aware of any unintended impressions by the juxtaposition of the objects you are showing. This is best avoided by making photographs from enough different angles to give a complete and accurate representation of the positions of all the elements.

The subject of these photographs was a disused flatbed semi-trailer. It was in a rural field with a number of other discarded vehicles . None could be moved.

All of these photographs were made with the same 50 mm lens on the same full frame sensor camera so there was no variation in the field of view between the images. As mentioned, neither the trailer nor the car were  moved. My camera was on a tripod (as always) so all the photos were made from the same camera height.

In the first photo, how far under the trailer do you think the rear of the gold car was? Was its rear bumper against the left landing leg of the trailer? (Click on the image to enlarge, then click on the back arrow to return to the post.)

Moving the camera to the right showed the car’s rear bumper was not against the landing leg, but can you estimate how far the trunk lid was under the side of the trailer? (Click on the image to enlarge, then click on the back arrow to return to the post.)

Further right, looking directly at the front of the trailer, the car’s rear bumper was actually quite far from the trailer’s landing leg, and its trunk lid doesn’t look nearly as far under the trailer as in the two previous photos. (Click on the image to enlarge, then click on the back arrow to return to the post.)

Moving even farther to the right, you can now see that none of the rear of the car was under the side of the trailer. Again, neither vehicle was moved during this sequence. (Click on the image to enlarge, then click on the back arrow to return to the post.)

Three takeaways:

-1- Be aware of possible deception from a single photograph, both when making the photos yourself, and when evaluating photos provided to you. If the first image had been from a wreck scene, you certainly don’t want to opine that the rear of the car ended up under the trailer!

-2- Take multiple images from different camera positions to give a complete and accurate depiction of your subjects and their relationships to other objects in the frame.

-3- As mentioned in previous posts, using a tripod for every image not only insures a sharp image, but allows careful framing and a consistent look between images all made at the same height.