The Evidence Photographers International Council, founded in 1968, offers a variety of benefits to members  – which in turn, we suspect, benefit society at large by promoting standards for evidence photography.

EPIC has recently started to provide EPIC Certification, which can be completed by merely taking a test ($695), or at the completion of 1-3 educational modules ($495 each), or all three for $1,285, in which case application and membership fees are waived. In other words – housing and transportation costs aside, $1,285 is, in fact, the total cost. Each module consists of 1.5 days of traiing, followed by a half-day testing period.

It’s also worth taking a look at the related website Evidence Photographers – which includes some galleries of member work. The curent gallery of David Knoerlein’s impressive work in Iraq – “Iraq posed unique challenges for forensic digital imaging” – is not to be missed. See also Mr. Knoerlein’s extraordinary credentials (curriculum vitae here) and more of his work – including courses taught on- and -off-site at Forensic Digital Imaging.

Not having yet taken the training or the test, we’re not in a position to endorse EPIC’s venture into training and certification. And certification will never lead to a monopoly – consider the traditional evidentiary foundation for the admission of an image:

“is the object marked as Exhibit X for identification a fair and accurate represenation of what you observed at Y time and Z location about which you’ve just testified?”

And as cameras become more ubiquitous (security cameras, mobile phone camers, et cet.) we can expect more “amateur” photographs to be offered and admitted. All the more reason, then,to promote training and standards if only to have a common language to discuss the evidentiary value and weight of photography. Hats off, then, to EPIC.

As far as we can tell, the next two offerings of EPIC’s basic courses and certification are in January 16 – 18, 2011 in San Antonio, Texas. Unfortunately, the graphic link at present leads back to EPIC’s January 2010 offerings which, at this writing, have already occurred. We’ll try to get on with the EPIC staff and get more information for our readers.

Futher resources:

Link to EPIC test specifications as Acrobat/pdf file.