It is over 30 years since I started undertaking personal injury work and 20 since I first wrote a paper about this area in the Journal of Audiovisual Media in Medicine, now Journal of Visual Communication in Medicine. Looking at the current situation: What is the same? What has changed? What is the future for Personal Injury Photography? This paper will address the similarities and differences between clinical, forensic and personal injury photography including the principles behind the use of photography in litigation. It will also look at the state of casework in the UK and suggest possible ways forward to maximize the value to clinical photography departments in the view of the current legislation and marketplace for personal injury work.

1. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
Personal Injury
Photography
Principles and Practice

2. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
Personal Injury Photography
• Different names, what kind of work is it and who is doing it?
• What is your role as a Personal Injury Photographer?
Duties and responsibilities.
• Photographic practice – Clinical Photography++
• National need for Personal Injury Photographers and markets

3. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
Different names?
• Legal photography
• Evidence photography
• Personal injury photography
• Medicolegal or medical legal photography
• Scar photography
• Forensic photography
• Photographs for civil litigation

4. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
What and where?
• Road Traffic Accidents
• Occupational: Accident at Work Illness or Disease contracted
through Work
• Clinical Negligence / Medical Negligence
• Armed Forces / Military Personnel Injury
• Sports injury e.g. bites to ears.
• Environmental Health and Hazards in the Environment
including dangerous products, trips and falls, dog bites.
• Mainly civil but also Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority
(CICA) and some criminal/defense work.
• Photography in prison and in custody.

5. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
Clinical, forensic and personal injury photography
Clinical Forensic
Personal Injury
Child abuse
Elder abuse
Bedsores Assault and
battery
Medicolegal
Occupational
injuries
Traffic
accidents
Dog bites
“in loco
doctoris” Criminal
courts
Civil
courts
Pathological photography
Clinical negligence

6. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
Who is undertaking this work?
• Trained clinical photographers working in NHS and University
Departments and Independently.
• Forensic specialists as part of their work alongside Road
Accident Analysis.
• General High Street Photographers
• Consultants doing reports and photographs
• Dentists (Actually have an obligation to take dentolegal records
for litigation purposes)
• Family and friends of injured party
• Self-photography

7. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
What is your role as a
Personal Injury
Photographer?
You are acting as Expert Witnesses for the
court

8. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
Experts and expert witnesses
Who is an expert?
“An expert can be anyone with knowledge or experience of a
particular field or discipline beyond that to be expected of a
layman.
An expert witness is an expert who makes this knowledge and
experience available to a court to help it understand the issues of
a case and thereby reach a sound and just decision.”
UK Register of Expert Witnesses
No win, no fee?
Does not apply to experts or they would have a pecuniary
interest in the result of a case when they need to be objective.

9. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
Legal obligations
• Avoid the possibility of conflict of interest in cases of clinical
negligence.
• Be sufficiently qualified to undertake the work.
Overriding duty
• It is the duty of an expert to help the court on the matters
relevant to his expertise
• This duty overrides any obligation to the person from whom he
has received instructions or by whom he is paid.
• A set of personal injury photographs which fail to reproduce
certain details in the subject when those details are of evidential
value is just as misleading as a witness who tells a story and
leaves out important facts.

10. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
Professional qualifications
•The courts recognise that in in
experienced, trustworthy and
disinterested hands the capable of a very
high degree of accuracy.
•The court also takes judicial cognizance
of the fact that in careless, unskilled or
interested hands, it may produce
misleading and confusing results.

11. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
What additional skills are
required?
• Ability to understand and interpret the
medical consultants report.
•Able to work out required photographs
from the medical report and
•Subsequently to taking photographs
required work out if any additional
photographs are required on observing the
clients injuries.
•These are in relation to your understanding
of the legal requirements and basis for
personal injury claims.

12. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
Principles behind the use of
photography in civil litigation.
Clinical photography++
• Standardized representational photography in terms of clinical
views, plus
• Photographs that help to demonstrate the injuries and their
sequelae towards:
Provision of evidence
• Quantum of damage
• Pain and suffering
• Establishing causation of injury, liability and blame
• Rehabilitation needs, access and activities of daily living (ADL)
• Establishing a prognosis

13. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
Evidence towards means of
establishing compensation
• Quantum or packets e.g. a scar, a bony injury, a certain amount
or quantity of muscle loss.
• Compensation comes from the word “Compensare” meaning
“to balance”.
• In personal injury litigation this is usually pecuniary return
against loss to return you to the status you would have been in
without the injury.

14. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
WHO Model
Impairment Disability Handicap
Language
Hearing
Vision
Speaking
Listening
Seeing
Orientation
Skeletal
Dressing, feeding Physical independence
Walking Mobility
Pyschological Behaving Social integration

15. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
Use of WHO Model for injury
assessment
Criterion Description Photographs
Diseases or
disorder
Damage to flexor
tendon
Theatre or A&E records of
torn tendon
Impairment Loss of complete
opposition of thumb
Standardized views of injury
Range of movement of
thumb
Disability Loss of pincer grip Inability to produce grip
Handicap Inability to work with
hand
Holding needle with fingers
not fingers and thumb

16. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
National need for
Personal Injury
Photographers
and marketing

17. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
Local solicitors
likely to look to
local photographers
Larger firms needing
photographers
throughout the country
Marketing solutions
Local marketing of
services to solicitors
in hospital
catchment
National collective
marketing and
referral required
Market needs

18. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
Institute of Medical Illustrators
According to Find a Professional only 6 members are undertaking
this work out of 59 photographers.

19. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
What is the future for Personal
Injury Photography?
•Is this the visible face of clinical
photography?
•If a photographers in departments or
freelance are doing this work what
training/personal development are they
doing to be enable them to undertake this
work?
•If there does end up being an issue
raised in the courts are we prepared for
any side effects or impacts on the clinical
photography profession?

20. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
Ways of moving forward and
supporting each other
Strength in numbers
• Collaborating and working in and with national networks
Registration
• We have a lot going for us as Clinical Photographers.
However, competence as a clinical photographer ≠ competence
as a personal injury photographer.
Training
• Learning materials to support the development of personal
injury photographers e.g. online interactive learning materials,
webinars including formative feedback and tutorial support.
• Personal Injury Photography Support site e.g. website or
private facebook/LinkedIn group

21. Personal Injury Photography: Principles and Practice
If you would like to be included on my e-
mail list for when the materials are ready
please
e-mail me at d.bryson@cladonia.co.uk or
just want a copy of the presentation
slides. NB Will be without clinical type
slides.
First stage is likely to be a survey of
photographers and later development of
materials for beta testing before final
materials and site ready for everybody.