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The Visual Elements―Photography: A Handbook for Communicating Science and Engineering
For novice or pro, primary investigator or postdoc, the essentials for photographing science and technology for journals, grant applications, and public understanding.
Award-winning photographer Felice C. Frankel, whose work has graced the covers of Science , Nature , and Scientific American , among other publications, offers a quick guide for scientists and engineers who want to communicate—and better understand—their research by creating compelling photographs. Like all the books in the Visual Elements series, this short guide uses engaging examples to train researchers to learn visual communication. Distilling her celebrated books and courses to the essentials, Frankel shows scientists and engineers the importance of thinking visually. When she creates stunning images of scientific phenomena, she is not only interested in helping researchers to convey understanding to others in their research community or to gain media attention, but also in making these experts themselves “look longer” to understand more fully. Ideal for researchers who want a foothold for presenting and preparing their work for conferences, journal publications, and funding agencies, the book explains four tools that all readers can use—a phone, a camera, a scanner, and a microscope—and then offers important advice on composition and image manipulation ethics. The Visual Elements—Photography is an essential element in any scientist’s, engineer’s, or photographer’s library.
Award-winning photographer Felice C. Frankel, whose work has graced the covers of Science , Nature , and Scientific American , among other publications, offers a quick guide for scientists and engineers who want to communicate—and better understand—their research by creating compelling photographs. Like all the books in the Visual Elements series, this short guide uses engaging examples to train researchers to learn visual communication. Distilling her celebrated books and courses to the essentials, Frankel shows scientists and engineers the importance of thinking visually. When she creates stunning images of scientific phenomena, she is not only interested in helping researchers to convey understanding to others in their research community or to gain media attention, but also in making these experts themselves “look longer” to understand more fully. Ideal for researchers who want a foothold for presenting and preparing their work for conferences, journal publications, and funding agencies, the book explains four tools that all readers can use—a phone, a camera, a scanner, and a microscope—and then offers important advice on composition and image manipulation ethics. The Visual Elements—Photography is an essential element in any scientist’s, engineer’s, or photographer’s library.
208 pages, Paperback
Published November 10, 2023
21 people want to read
About the author
Felice Frankel
10 books1 followerScience photographer Felice Frankel is a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the department of Chemical Engineering with additional support from Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering. She joined MIT in 1994.
Felice is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She was previously a Senior Research Fellow in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences in the Initiative for Innovative Computing (IIC), and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Systems Biology.
She developed and instructed the first online MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) for edX addressing science and engineering photography, “Making Science and Engineering Pictures: A Practical Guide to Presenting Your Work” (course 0.111x). The course’s 34 tutorials and supplemental materials are available on MIT OpenCourseWare.
In 2001, Felice founded the Image and Meaning workshops and conferences whose purpose was to develop new approaches to promote the public understanding of science through visual expression. She was also principal investigator of the National Science Foundation-funded program, “Picturing to Learn”, an effort to study how making representations by students, aids in teaching and learning science.
Exhibition at the New York Hall of Science.
Working in collaboration with scientists and engineers, her images have appeared in outlets such as Nature, Science, JACS, PNAS, Langmuir, Joule, National Geographic, Newsweek, Scientific American, Discover, Popular Science, and New Scientist, among others.
Additionally, Felice has been profiled in the New York Times, WIRED, Life, Boston Globe, Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and “Science Friday”, and various European publications. Her limited-edition photographs are included in a number of corporate and private collections, and her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, including at the Kennedy Center Arts Summit (“Wonder”), Museum of Modern Art (“Design and the Elastic Mind”), New York Hall of Science, and along the Champs-Élysées in Paris, and as a traveling exhibition supported by Bracco Imaging Group in Italy, including Genoa, Rome, Naples, Perugia, Milano, and New York University’s Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò.
Felice is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She was previously a Senior Research Fellow in Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences in the Initiative for Innovative Computing (IIC), and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Systems Biology.
She developed and instructed the first online MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) for edX addressing science and engineering photography, “Making Science and Engineering Pictures: A Practical Guide to Presenting Your Work” (course 0.111x). The course’s 34 tutorials and supplemental materials are available on MIT OpenCourseWare.
In 2001, Felice founded the Image and Meaning workshops and conferences whose purpose was to develop new approaches to promote the public understanding of science through visual expression. She was also principal investigator of the National Science Foundation-funded program, “Picturing to Learn”, an effort to study how making representations by students, aids in teaching and learning science.
Exhibition at the New York Hall of Science.
Working in collaboration with scientists and engineers, her images have appeared in outlets such as Nature, Science, JACS, PNAS, Langmuir, Joule, National Geographic, Newsweek, Scientific American, Discover, Popular Science, and New Scientist, among others.
Additionally, Felice has been profiled in the New York Times, WIRED, Life, Boston Globe, Washington Post, The Chronicle of Higher Education, National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” and “Science Friday”, and various European publications. Her limited-edition photographs are included in a number of corporate and private collections, and her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, including at the Kennedy Center Arts Summit (“Wonder”), Museum of Modern Art (“Design and the Elastic Mind”), New York Hall of Science, and along the Champs-Élysées in Paris, and as a traveling exhibition supported by Bracco Imaging Group in Italy, including Genoa, Rome, Naples, Perugia, Milano, and New York University’s Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò.
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April 30, 2024
I read this book cover to cover in one sitting and read some parts multiple times. This book is visually gorgeous and enlightening, which is not surprising coming from such an experienced pro in this field. I found especially interesting the guidance for using a regular flatbed scanner to "photograph" a small three-dimensional subject, as well as using other unconventional techniques.
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