The Visual Elements—Photography

"""A handbook of practical tips and thought-provoking images to inspire scientists and engineers to better photograph their own research for use in journal articles, grant applications and to help the public better understand their work. . . . The book is filled with tips on lighting, composition, depth of field, cropping, and helpful improvisations like taping together plain paper to create a backdrop that hides the fussy background of your research lab and makes your subject pop."" -- Adam Duckett * The Chemical Engineer * ""Frankel has spent decades as a teacher, training young researchers and established faculty to be effective visual storytellers. As part of that enterprise, she has just published The Visual Elements—Photography, the first in a series of handbooks that collect and curate her methods of communicating research through images. . . . This compact, 225-page primer highlights four devices Frankel has learned to exploit, in often ingenious ways: the scanner, phone, camera, and microscope. Her chapters break down the strengths and limitations of each of these tools, drawing on her experiences creating images with scientific collaborators. . . . There are stunning and unexpected views of agate, slime molds, electrolyzer technologies, microfluidic devices, a statue at the Isabella Gardner Museum, and a bubbling Bolognese pasta sauce—all presented in the process of imparting methods for optimizing backgrounds, cropping photos, selecting the right lighting, and determining the best resolution. . . . There’s great joy in this line of work, and Frankel wants to share it with others. ‘This series is a distillation of really thirty years of what I've been doing and continue doing,’ she says. ‘The dirty little secret is that I'm learning the science as I'm making all these images. It's a great, great job.’"" -- Leda Zimmerman * MIT News * “Frankel is a legend when it comes to science imaging. This book is her powerful, inspiring guide to the tools and techniques for success.” -- Randi Klett, photography director, IEEE Spectrum “A trove of clear and concise recipes in granular detail.” * Nature, on ""Picturing Science and Engineering"" * “In a word, remarkable.” * Physics Today, on ""Picturing Science and Engineering"" * “Spectacular. . . . A brilliant demonstration of just how photogenic science can be and a guide to taking similar pictures.” * Times Higher Education, on ""Picturing Science and Engineering"" *"