What is scientific photography?

It is the one that is used as a means of recording and disseminating reality, and is considered a work element to communicate science. Depending on the size of the resulting image in relation to the size of the object we distinguish betweenfotomacrografíaand photomicrography. Photomicrography is one that allows a detailed image of subjects and structures of large or small dimensions, with a magnification ratio of 1: 1, whilephotomicrography is the registration of extremely small objects, hardly visible to the naked eye, whose image is projected through a microscope and captured with a camera inserted in it. One of the pioneers in this technique was theFrench physician Alfred Donné, who in 1840 captured a photomicrograph of frog blood. Currently there are photomicroscopes that integrate the camera and the microscope. Techniques such asinfrared photography, ultraviolet photographyYfluorescence photography.

From the point of view of the history of science, photography has played an important role. It was by using photographs that Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was validated. And by capturing images in the so-called “cloud chambers” protons and electrons were photographed in 1931. Furthermore, by portraying mitochondrial DNA, we have recently managed to reconstruct much of the history of life.

Another interesting application is the study of movement with images, in which he pioneeredEadweard James Muybridge, which used a battery of 24 tiny cameras with tapes attached to triggers that broke at the pace of a horse to trigger cameras sequentially and study their movements. Later, during the 1880s to 1890s, Muybridge used36 cameras to study the movements of various animals and humans. Fruit of his work was the bookAnimal Locomotiven. Later, from the 1930s on, H. Edgerton used straboscopic lights to capture the movement of a ball or the stroke of a golfer, among other snapshots. Currently it is possible to work in the order of picoseconds (10-12 sec) using aslight source a pulsed laserto study movement in liquids and gases, combustion and detonation, fluid dynamics, plasma research, etc.