Scriptor

A photographically enhanced image believed to be that of the
Face of Jesus Christ from the Shroud of Turin.

This issue of the Journal, Vol 49 #3, has to be one of my favorites. It contains “Ultraviolet Fluorescence Photography of the Shroud of Turin” which was the subject of one of the papers I attended at an annual meeting of the BPA (now BCA). I recall that it “played” to a packed house! I know the team was given a week to set up and only three days in which to take the myriad of photographs and radiographs, (radiographs were taken but not mentioned in the paper and I believe they were done at night).  This was a wonderful piece of logistics that produced some startling images. I was pleased to note that the authors, V.D. Miller and S.F. Pellicori, did not enter into the philosophical aspects of the Shroud, which might have proven to be very controversial.

The second paper that intrigued me was “Endoscopic Photography in Otolaryngology” by Barbara Katzenberg. At this point I feel I should make an apology! Many of us ‘oldsters’ are stricken with the “I Remember Syndrome” and  this case is no exception. I do remember trying very hard to photograph the larynx – with little success I might add. At that time I was interested in gastroscopy, at first with a blind endoscope (the Olympus gastrocamera), and then with a fibre-optic scope. One of the drawbacks with these ‘scopes’ was that the image often contained small black dots as the result of broken fibres, fortunately a thing of the past.

Scriptor

Author

With the passing of Peter Hansell, Ron Irvine picks up the pen to continue "25 Years ago in the Journal of Biological Photography" and writes under the pseudonym Scriptor. Irvine is a long-time member of BCA and IMI. He is a Registered Biological Photographer, Fellow of the BCA, and an honorary member of IMI. His e-mail address is irviron@gmail.com.