Explore the fascinating world of scientific photography.

Soon after early photographers’ successful experiments with silver-plate daguerreotypes in the late 1830s, they recognised photography’s potential as a scientific tool. In fact, the oldest surviving photo of the moon dates back to 1840. Then, as now, scientific photos could serve as both data records and teaching tools.

As photographic techniques improved throughout the 20th century — and leaped forward with the development of electron microscopes, digital camera technology and space telescopes like NASA’s Hubble — the scientific value of photos has expanded to cover everything from cell structures to supernovas.

“Now there are all sorts of ways that you can process images in order to extract data,” says scientific photographer Heather Wilson. “If you have a cell tissue specimen on a slide and you want to know how many of those cells are of a certain type, you can use a tissue dye and software to learn that, for example, 42% of the pixels are the colour of a particular cell type. So you can use post-processing to pull data out of images.”

A good photo can even help prove or disprove hypotheses. In her research in paleobiology, Wilson identified new organisms from fossils. “You have to be able to show people specific features of the organism. You need really good-quality images so that someone else can either disagree or agree with you that you found something new.”

Photographic imaging can also help non-scientists gain a better understanding of the natural world and they can attract attention to important work in ways that words and numbers can’t. In fields like climate science, photos can more powerfully convey the seriousness of the crisis we face.

“Scientific photography needs to also be something that can appeal to and draw in the public’s attention,” says conservationist photographer Ellen Morris Bishop. If you can take great photos, you may find a more receptive audience for your work.

You don’t need expensive tools to start building your skills. You can take scientific photos with any digital camera. “For macro images, you can use an iPhone or Android or any mobile phone with a good camera. The images that they take are good and there are some things you can do with a phone that you really can’t do with a conventional camera, like panoramas,” Bishop says.

While you learn the science, learn as much as you can about photography so you can take better pictures and see more creative possibilities in your approach to them. Study all aspects of photography — including the technical aspects like aperture, f-stop, white balance and focus stacking — to learn how adjusting your camera will affect your photos.

“Basic photography skills make it so much easier to do what you need to do, but they also give you more of an idea of what you can do,” Wilson says. “My DSLR has a million menus and knowing how to use those functions is invaluable. There’s only so much you can do in post-processing if you haven’t taken the image that you want in the first place.”

Bishop recommends taking a photography class. “There are thousands of great workshops people can take, all the way from an extensive month-long trip somewhere to just something through your local museum,” she says. “And some workshops will open your eyes to the possibilities of different camera lenses and different kinds of cameras.”

With a digital camera, you’re only limited by your battery life and data card, so you can snap shot after shot from several different angles and camera settings. “Practice and go back and review your images, thinking about what you really wanted to show in that image,” Bishop says. “It’s not polluting to throw away a bunch of digital images. My favourite Ansel Adams quote is, ‘The most important piece of equipment in the darkroom is the wastebasket.’” 

When you edit scientific photos, you shouldn’t fundamentally change the image from how it appears to the human eye, but you can use editing software like Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom for light image manipulation.

“I only do in Photoshop what I could have accomplished with a camera if I were more skilled in taking the photograph in the first place or had better lighting,” Wilson says. “What’s really great in something like Photoshop is that you can hone in on the shadows or highlights.”

In her paleobiology work, Wilson had to photograph flat and shiny fossils. “It’s really hard to get an image where you can show all of the details without some of them being washed out because they’re too bright or too dark. And so it’s really helpful to use something like Photoshop to go in and just change the exposure on different areas of your image so people can see what you could see when you looked at the object,” Wilson says.