Scientific photography

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As scientific photography refers to the shooting to carry out scientific analysis or documentation ; The focus of the image function is in the area of knowledge representation . Photography itself is seen not as a science but as a technique .

The transitions to calculated images and imaging processes are fluid. With its objective claim, scientific photography systematically forms the opposite pole to subjective artistic photography .

History and Development

In the early days of photography , the possibilities and limits of the new medium were discovered; the previously invisible was visualized in different areas; As part of a visual turning point , the possibilities of optics and light were first explored and exhausted.

The pioneers of scientific photography include, for example, Louis Pierre Rousseau , Achille Jacques Jean Maria Deveria , Louis Auguste , Auguste-Rosalie Bisson .

Natural history documentation

James Deane with his photographs of fossils , Edward Steichen with his photos of flowers and plants as well as the brothers Richard and Cherry Kearton with their numerous books on natural history are among the photo pioneers of the early days .

Visualization of the invisible

The photomicrograph showed a microcosm with unprecedented precision; William Henry Fox Talbot exhibited photogenic drawings of crystals , parts of plants and insect wings as early as 1839 . James Glaisher made 1,855 photomicrographs of snowflakes on.

The astrophotography showed the macrocosm and the people who never through a telescope had looked; already in 1840 managed JW Draper photographing the moon , in 1845 took Léon Foucault and Hippolyte Fizeau first sunspots on. Other pioneers include John Adams Whipple , George Phillips Bond , Warren De La Rue and Lewis Morris Rutherfurd .

The high-speed - or chronophotography froze movements a photographically who could not see the human eye; spectacular series photos with movement studies come, for example, from Eadweard Muybridge ( Animal Locomotion , 1887 ) and Étienne-Jules Marey , who constructed the photographic rifle in 1883 , and from the German Ottomar Anschütz .

With the help of flash photography and stroboscopic flash , Harold Edgerton succeeded in the 1930s in capturing projectiles in flight; Arthur Banfield photographed the lifespan of a milk drop in a photo series around 1900 .

The aerial photography has been of Nadar ( Gaspard Felix Tournachon practically applied): He photographed 1858 Paris from a huge balloon with built darkroom to develop the photographic plates. James Wallace Black undertook similar attempts in Boston in 1860 .

To another visual paradigm shift occurred when the discovery of the phenomenon of secondary radiation in 1895 , the X-rays discovered and starting around 1896 as X-ray image (z. B. John McItyre , AW Wright u. A.) Were photographically fixed. For the first time "something other than visible light for visualization" was used (hull).

In psychiatry , photography was first proposed by Hugh Welch Diamond in 1852 used as an aid to diagnosis. Jean-Martin Charcot tried something similar at the Paris Hôpital Salpêtrière around 1884 .

The paraphysical method of so-called Kirlian photography , which was developed by Semjon Kirlian and Valentina Kirlian around 1939, forms a border area to scientific photography . The precise name for this is high-frequency high-voltage photography , is scientifically reproducible and was patented in 1949 .

With this method of corona discharge photography , electrical discharges around living things can be visualized. The aura- like phenomena are associated with the paranormal phenomenon of the energy body of theosophy and anthroposophy , but are also used pragmatically in medical cancer diagnosis .

See also

literature

  • Ernst Angerer: Scientific Photography. An introduction to theory and practice (4th ed.). Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsges. Geest & Protig 1950
  • Franz Daxecker: On the 100th birthday and 30th anniversary of Prof. Dr. Herbert Schober . Klin Mbl. Augenheilk 2004; 221: 133-134.
  • Krech, Hartmut: Photographs of people. From type picture to anthropological photography. In: Photo history . 4/1984, issue 14. Full text (HTML)
  • Krech, Hartmut: A picture of the world. The requirements of anthropological photography. (Dissertation, University of Cologne, 1984). Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre Verlag, 1989. Foreword and introduction (HTML)
  • Gottfried Schröder: Technical Photography. Basics and applications in technology and science . 280 pages. 1981. ISBN 3-8023-0144-7
  • Hellmut Frieser: Photographic information recording . 592 pages. Oldenbourg, Munich 1975. ISBN 3-486-34441-2
  • Herbert Schober (Ed.): Photography and cinematography. Basics and application in science . Hamburg: Wesemeyer 1957
  • Richard Zierl: Technical photography for natural scientists, doctors and engineers . 220 pages. Munich 2006. ISBN 978-3-8273-7264-2