Profile
Photo Synthesis is a rotating showcase of the best science photography on the web.
Ted Kinsman is a scientific photographer that specializes in creating images for books, magazines, and television. His particular areas of interest are in x-ray radiography, high-speed photography, Scanning electron microscopy, and time-lapse cinematography. His work has appeared in numerous books and magazines ranging from Discover Magazine to Forbes. Recently his work has appeared on Gray's Anatomy and CSI New York. In addition to running www.sciencephotography.com Kinsman also teaches advanced placement physics at Brighton High School in Rochester, NY, he also teaches advanced macro-photography at Rochester Institute of Technology.
B.N. (Bobbie) Sullivan has a strong affinity for the sea and everything in it. She first learned to dive in 1970 and has since logged thousands of dives. A wish to document the marine life she encountered prompted her to learn underwater photography more than 20 years ago. More recently, she began to write about the marine life she has photographed. A research psychologist by profession, she approaches her subject matter with the mindset of a scientist, but targets her writing to a general readership in whom she hopes to foster an appreciation for the ocean and its inhabitants.
Bobbie lives in Hawaii with her husband. Together they produce TheRightBlue.com, where you can see more of Bobbie's photos and writing.
B Jefferson Bolender is Training Coordinator of the State of Arizona's
program for disability awareness and assistive technology. Through
her travels she always has a camera at hand to photograph everything
from people to technology and nature. As a teacher of elementary
education, special education and art, her interests include a wide
array of subject matter with an emphasis on documentation with an
artist's eye.
See more of her work in her photo stream on
Flickr and the website atarizona.com.
Steve Jurvetson enjoys rocketry and photography and especially the pursuit of both in the Black Rock Desert. Some action photos and video links can be found here.
Steve is a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ.com), a leading venture capital firm with affiliate offices around the world.
He was the founding VC investor in Hotmail, Interwoven, and Kana. Previously, he was an R&D Engineer at HP, and his prior technical experience also includes programming, materials science research, and computer design. He has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, an MSEE and and MBA, all from Stanford University.
Alex Wild is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he works on the molecular phylogenetics of various groups of insects. He is also a part-time photographer whose images appear in such venues as Ranger Rick, Smithsonian, BBC Wildlife, and even ScienceBlogs.
Alex's galleries are viewable at www.alexanderwild.com, and he normally blogs at Myrmecos Blog.
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November 3, 2009
Category: Perception • Water
The human brain has an uncanny ability to see the human form in the most unlikely places. Religious icons in toast and faces in the clouds are but a few examples. Here it is droplets of water colliding with each other. I call the shot above "Man and Woman." This tendency to create order out of chaos never stops to amaze me. I will leave it to the reader to see what they can find in the image below.
These images were taken with a Cognisys Inc. water drip valve and microprocessor camera controller. The flash is from two off axis strobes with a duration of 1/60,000th of a second. More drops hitting drops in the next post.
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This post was written by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis
Posted by Erin Johnson at 5:06 PM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 19, 2009
Category: Technology • X-Ray
The world of X-ray photography is a very interesting place and surprises are often found in every image. X-rays are similar to Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) in the sense that the collected images are only black and white. To take these image I use a scientific X-ray machine at a local company. The source is much finer than a medical device and the exposure has to be taken on film since the large digital detectors have not yet come down in price. Here an antique alarm clock is X-rayed. The film is then scanned into a high resolution digital file that has to be meticulously hand colored in photoshop. The colors are only chosen to look nice together and to highlight the different parts of the clock. It is hard to see on this web resolution file, but the alarm clock has been over-wound and the main spring on the right hand side is broken. Thus the broken clock was only a dollar at the local flea market. By the way, there are several flea markets that I can be found wandering around in the summer, often carrying the strangest of objects. With X-rays the color and scratched surface is of no interest, and often times broken things are more interesting than working ones.
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This post was written by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis.
Posted by Erin Johnson at 3:34 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 13, 2009
Category: Motion • Technology • Water
This is how.
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This image was provided by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis.
Posted by Erin Johnson at 6:10 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 6, 2009
Category: Motion • Physics • high speed photography
With high speed photography, I can use a high voltage spark to create a flash of only 1/1,000,000th of a second in duration. The problem is that there are not a lot of things that move this fast that such a flash is required to stop the motion. Bullets are such a subject requiring a very high speed flash system. Around the lab we jokingly call this "ludicrous speed". After photographing bullets hit just about every conceivable object it is time to move on to other subjects. In this case a paint ball is sent into the edge of a straight razor blade. The paint ball crosses two optical detectors that measure the velocity (166 feet per second) then trigger the flash when the paint ball has traveled about 12 inches. The momentum of the paint ball keeps the ball in motion even after being sliced in half by the razor blade. A wonderful way to illustrate Newton's Law of Inertia - that is, an object in motion will stay in motion until a suitable force is applied to stop it.
With many photo sessions once the photography is done we will stand around looking at all the equipment set up and wonder what else we can do with it before the set has to be disassembled. At this point someone wondered what would happen if the paint ball were to hit an egg?
The results above show that the paint ball hits at such a speed as to break, then force the yolk out the other side before moving through the rest of the shell. Shots like this create a tremendous mess and parts of the lab will have pinhead specks of pink paint ball dye and dried egg yolk for years to come. I hope this image excites the minds of a few readers. I always welcome ideas, even though it is often years before I get around to doing a certain project.
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This post was written by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis.
Posted by Erin Johnson at 4:47 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 28, 2009
Category: Light • Motion • Photography • Physics
I have photographed jugglers several times in the past for physics text books. I have been impressed with the level of skill some jugglers can obtain. It is difficult enough to juggle three balls, four is more difficult, and fire is a another story. When objects move in a circle they can undergo some fairly complicated motions. What would be the best way to show this motion in a still image?
In this case the camera is panned by the juggler at a constant rate on a computer controlled pan head. When the juggler is about the center of the frame a flash is set off. The image shows both the flip the club does at the top of the throw and the uneven motion of the clubs as the juggler makes corrections to his throw as the motion is kept under control. This juggler is has been practicing for three years and is currently only 14 years old!
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This post was written by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis.
Posted by Erin Johnson at 3:25 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 23, 2009
Category: Luminescence • Optics
I often get asked to photograph odd things, more times than not the project changes when an art director decides to take a different path for an article. Such requests are a great source of ideas.
In this case a request was for triboluminescence. This is where my background in physics and optics is a big help. Triboluminescence is an optical phenomenon in which light is generated when asymmetrical crystalline bonds in a material are broken when that material is crushed. There are a number of materials that do this including quartz, sugar and even ice. In this image I am hitting a wintergreen lifesaver candy fairly hard with a hammer. This is clearly visible to the human eye, but very difficult to capture with a camera. To get enough light 10 candies had to be smashed in the same location. The outline of the hammer and candy is a double exposure from a separate frame. This image conveys what you would see if you did this yourself- I hope some of the readers give it a try. The lifesavers also give off light as they are dissolved in solution - such as saliva in your mouth. This is a good excuse for you and a friend to go in a dark room and eat lifesavers. If you do not have a handy assistant for this experiment - use a mirror and look at your own mouth as you eat a wintergreen lifesaver. There is still a lot that is unknown about the physics of triboluminescence. As far a photographing the process in ice - that is top of my to-do-list.
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This post was written by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis
Posted by Erin Johnson at 12:30 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
September 15, 2009
Category: Butterflies • Insects
A scanning electron microscope image of a monarch butterfly wing.
Since a scanning electron microscope only collects a black and white image (representing intensity of electrons) the image must be colorized with photoshop. The colors are fairly close to the real colors of the wing.
The wing is composed of scales or platelets that in turn have a micro structure that creates turbulence as the wing moves through the air. The turbulence is responsible for decreasing drag on the wing and allows the butterfly to move with less energy.
Monarch Butterflies are native to North America where they migrate each spring from a wintering ground in Mexico. Each generation moves further north until the last generation gets the urge to migrate back to Mexico. Many Monarch butterflies are blown off course by storms. The butterflies in modern times have established themselves where ever there is a suitable host plant. Fairly recently monarchs have become established in New Zealand. Monarchs were not established in New Zealand until the caterpillar's host plant of milkweed was accidentally released in the early 1900's.
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This post was written by Ted Kinsman for Photo Synthesis
Posted by Erin Johnson at 1:31 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 31, 2009
Category: Corals • Photography
Scleractinian corals, also known as stony corals -- or just hard corals -- are the primary reef builders in the oceans. Their polyps secrete calcium carbonate to form a skeleton. A minority of species live as single polyps, but most stony coral species are colonial, and the structures they build 'grow' over time. They form a myriad of shapes: mounds, branches, fingers, plates, and encrustations.
In several previous posts I discussed and displayed photos of a number of so-called soft corals, all of which are octocorals, i.e., their polyps have eight tentacles. Stony corals are hexacorals: their polyps have tentacles in multiple of six. Most seem to feed at night, so you are not likely to see the tentacles extended during daylight hours.
The coral in the first photo (top right) forms a rounded hemispherical head that is grooved in a meandering, maze-like pattern. Corals that form these kinds of colonies often are referred to as 'brain corals' because the patterns of the ridges and grooves are reminiscent of the sulci of a brain. The one pictured is Diploria labyrinthiformis, a species common throughout the Caribbean Sea.
Below is another example of a 'brain coral' -- this one from the Red Sea. This species (Platygyra daedalea) forms massive colonies, sometimes more than a meter in diameter. Most brain corals belong to the family Faviidae.
I mentioned above that some hard corals live as single corallites. Members of the family Fungiidae fit that description. Known by the common name Mushroom Corals, these are free-living, i.e., they are not attached to the substrate. The photo below is a macro image of Fungia scutaria, an Indo-Pacific species. This is the most common mushroom coral found in Hawaii, where this one was photographed. The overall shape of the corallite usually is oval, with septae radiating from a central mouth, as shown in the photo. The corallite can attain a width of 15 cm to 18 cm (6 in to 7 in).
While hard corals all have calcareous skeletons by definition, the rest of their anatomy consists mostly of soft parts. Some of those can obscure the skeleton to the point that it is hard to tell, just by looking, that some species are indeed hard corals. A good example is Bubble Coral (Plerogyra sp.), shown in the next photo, below. The stalked corallites of this genus form rounded colonies. The skeleton of the colony is obscured during daylight hours by bubble-shaped vesicles. When this coral feeds, the vesicles deflate, and the tentacles emerge.
By the way, in this macro image you can see clearly that this coral is infested with little pancake-shaped critters. They are Waminoa flatworms. The photo was taken at Bunaken Island, Indonesia where much of the bubble coral seemed to be sporting Waminoa.
Corals of the genus Goniopora seem to feed mostly during daylight hours. The polyps have 24 tentacles arranged in a way that makes them look like flowers. The macro photo below shows the clustered polyps of a Goniopora species from the Red Sea.
A favorite subject with underwater photographers are the colorful members of the family Dendrophylliidae. They grow tubular skeletons topped by a cup-shaped calyx, so they are known by the common names Tube Corals or Cup Corals. Another common name is Cave Coral, a name that refers to this family's habit of growing on the walls and roofs of underwater caves, and underneath ledges. Some members of the family are colonial, while others are solitary. All of them have gloriously colored tentacles, usually in shades of red, orange, or bright yellow.
I will close with two photos of a colonial Dendrophyllid species from Hawaii, Tubastrea coccinea. Both photos are of the same colony, located inside a small underwater cavelet, but taken at two different times. The first image was captured during daylight hours and the tentacles are retracted into the calyces.
The final photo is a macro image of a polyp from the same colony as above, but this one was taken during a night dive. When their beautifully colored tentacles are extended for feeding, these corals are a sight to behold.
I hope the readers of Photo Synthesis have enjoyed my underwater photos as much as I have enjoyed presenting them during the past month.
Posted by B. N. Sullivan at 8:50 AM • 11 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
August 28, 2009
Category: Crustaceans • Photography • fishes
Many animals in the sea have evolved colors and forms that allow them to blend in with their surroundings. Some animals use their camouflage to hide from predators -- and some predators use camouflage to fool their prey.
It can be difficult to photograph such animals, partly because it's often hard to find them in the first place. If you look carefully at the photo at right, you will be able to make out the shape of a small purplish slipper lobster (Parribacus antarcticus), right in the center of the photo.
The picture was taken inside an underwater cave in Hawaii, and the lobster was on the ceiling. As I shined my light back and forth, the beam passed over the little lobster several times, but I didn't spot it. Not until it suddenly scurried across the patch of red encrusting sponge was its presence betrayed.
Many animals that dwell primarily on sandy bottoms do an excellent job of blending in with their surroundings. Usually they are pale, with mottling or light patterns that help them mimic the substrate on which they rest. A good example is the flounder (Bothus mancus) in the next photo. I was preparing to photograph something else, and I didn't notice the flounder until I very nearly knelt on the poor thing.
Sometimes an animal's eyes are the one feature that will interrupt the camouflage effect and give it away, however this next image illustrates how even a critter's eyes can be somewhat camouflaged. This is a crocodile fish (Papilloculiceps longiceps), a bottom-dwelling ambush predator from the Red Sea. Take a good look at its eyes and notice the lappets -- the small irregular flaps that partially obscure the eyeballs -- a part of its disguise.
Speaking of ambush predators, members of the Scorpionfish family (Scorpaenidae) are camouflage champs among fishes. Below is a Bearded Scorpionfish (Scorpaenopsis barbatus) perched on a reef. Decorated with all kinds of little frills, this fellow can be almost indistinguishable from surrounding plants and soft corals.
Next is another member of the same family, a Devil Scorpionfish (Scorpaenopsis diabolus) from Hawaii. This species hangs out around the rocks and dead coral rubble near the edges of reefs, trying its best to look like just another lump as it waits for unsuspecting prey to pass by. Were it not for its fins, it might go unnoticed by the photographer as well as its prey.
Finally, my favorite scorpionfish species, the Leaf Scorpionfish (Taenianotus triacanthus), which comes in quite an array of colors: nearly black, dark brown, purple, pale pink, white, and scrummy yellow like this one. These laterally compressed fishies perch on the bottom, on ledges, or on coral heads to wait for prey. They sway gently back and forth, just as a leaf might. They often are adorned with algae and scaly crud, which enhances their camouflage. This one, photographed in Hawaii, looks like it is about to molt.
In case you are having trouble figuring out which end is which in the photo above, the head is on the right. (Look for the eye and the pectoral fin). Camouflaged fishes and other creatures may not always be the prettiest animals in the sea, but they are among the most interesting of photo subjects. The only problem is locating them in the photo once you get home!
Posted by B. N. Sullivan at 8:40 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
