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.

Felice C. Frankel is an award-winning science photographer and research scientist in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Frankel is a Guggenheim Fellow and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At MIT, Frankel developed and instructed the first online MOOC (Massive Online Open Course) for edX addressing science and engineering photography. Working in collaboration with scientists and engineers, Frankel has had images appear in National Geographic, Nature, Science, Angewandte Chemie, Advanced Materials, Materials Today, PNAS, Newsweek, Scientific American, Discover, Popular Science, and New Scientist, among others. She is the author or coauthor of several books, including Envisioning Science, No Small Matter, On the Surface of Things, Visual Strategies, and Picturing Science and Engineering.