Photos

The meaning of life

Science photographer Malcolm Ricketts' stunning images of plants and animals are the result of almost thirty years documenting the work of University of Sydney scientists.

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The craft of scientific photography was very different when Malcolm Ricketts started work at Sydney University nearly 30 years ago.

"When I started I used a 4 x 5 inch camera, there were even still a few glass plates lying around that were in the stock.

"All the graphs and illustrations were all done by a school artist in Letraset, then photographed, then multiple copies made and sent off to the editors and reviewers.

"And the same for photographs. Everything was done in black and white," says Ricketts, who documents the work of scientists at the University's School of Biological Sciences.

Today, all Rickett's photographs — both general and photomicroscopy — are taken with digital cameras, and most photographs are in colour except those taken on electron microscopes, which are black and white and artificially coloured.

And while the physics of taking a photo hasn't changed, significant changes in microscopy techniques over the last decade have enabled plant and molecular scientists to capture cellular detail in high resolution using green fluorescent proteins. (See photo#2 and photo#10 in photo gallery above)

Information, information, information

Capturing a good scientific image is very different to taking commercial and artistic photographs that hit you between the eyes, says Ricketts, who studied photography at TAFE after completing a biology degree.

Detail is critical.

"The photographs back up what the scientists describe."

This work is especially important in areas such as fluorescence microscopy where scientists are identifying structures, chromosome banding, and work on gene signalling and silencing in tobacco plants by Professor Peter Waterhouse (See photo #2 in photo gallery).

"You're conveying the maximum information of what the person who wants the image is trying to obtain. So if its cellular detail you go for the maximum detail. You're not looking for that advertising interocular jolt unless you are producing a PR image."

"Ultimately you go for your information, your detail and your art and pleasantness of an image."

One of Rickett's favourite images of Sydney Harbour coral Plesiastrea versipora (See photo #4 in photo gallery) — illustrates his point. The coral is coloured green by algae, so it's not as conventially beautiful as other images (See photo #3 in the photogallery), but the shot focuses on a single polyp.

"It's similar to orange soft coral, but it's got a little bit more detail in it."

Capturing the moment

Photographing an image that reflects what the scientist is trying to illustrate takes patience, says Ricketts.

A great example of this is a photo of anarchist bees laying eggs in honeycomb cells (See photo #11 in photo gallery), which Ricketts took for Professor Ben Oldroyd, who studies bee behaviour.

"That's a four second opportunity over the space of four or five hours of just concentrating looking down the camera waiting for an anarchist bee to wander around, shove its bum into a honeycomb cell and lay an egg, and then it's gone."

But science photography is a dying craft, he says.

"The science these days doesn't need the pictures as much as it did in the past.

"More and more and more science is becoming so molecular that scientists have lots of other evidence to back up the story.

"There would be very few scientific photographers left."

Ricketts images appear as part of a new exhibition The Meaning of Life at the Macleay Museum which chronicles some of the Australia's most significant advances in the biological sciences in the last 50 years.

The exhibition is open until 8 March 2013.