Rachel Falk

"In high school, I was always taking pictures, developing pictures," says Rachel Falk '94, ophthalmic photographer with the William Beaumont Hospital Eye Institute, Royal Oak, Michigan. "And I enjoyed science. When Professor Bill DuBois told me about biomedical photography at a meeting in high school, I was sold."

With her steady hands, Falk works with the institute and a private retinal practice of 10 doctors affiliated with the hospital. Patient care is the first priority of a biomedical photographer, she says, with clarity and accuracy in the images being equally important. (Falk had a good taste of both at RIT, she says, through her internship at the SUNY Buffalo Medical Center.) Falk uses cameras that can photograph the back of the eye to find hemorrhages or other oddities, or can detect blockages in arteries near the retina or can even count the number of cells on a cornea for transplant. Because sharp, clear quality in the images is mandatory, her department is making the move to digital equipment slowly, she says. "The screen images are clear, but the final product can still be fuzzy."

Falk says: "I'm studying for another professional certificate, so I don't get much time to do my own personal photography. We keep moving here. When you're dealing with patients, time is of the essence."

Photographs of Rachel Falk by Peter Roberts.

Ophthalmic photographs by Rachel Falk: top, the colorful fundus; bottom, fluorescein angiograph.