Description: Felice Frankel introduces the goals of the course and what students can expect to learn as they go through the material.
Instructor: Felice Frankel
FELICE FRANKEL: Hi, everyone. I'm Felice Frankel. I'm a science photographer and instructor here at MIT. I've been working with researchers for more than 20 years finding exciting ways to photograph some pretty amazing research and to visually communicate that research for journal articles, presentations, and other sorts of communication.
Now, before we start our course, I thought it would be helpful to go over a few things. First, just a little bit about what we're trying to accomplish. We'd like to introduce you to a new way to think about images of your research, a new approach in photographing science and engineering.
Whether you're in research or just someone interested in photographs, you will find these approaches relevant to your own everyday photography, if you're photographing small objects or desktop setups or even those quick images you make of your favorite dishes that you post online. It's really about making pictures that are more than good enough.
Most of the photographs in the course will be on the macro level-- closeup photography, for items measuring somewhere between 1 to 10 centimeters. We're not going to be discussing microscopic imaging, although the principles you'll be learning here will still be relevant. Now, what do I mean by new approaches?
It's about taking a step back and trying to see your material for the first time, thinking about how best to show what it is to someone else, to communicate with images, to bring clarity to your photographs and an understanding of how to communicate what is probably some pretty beautiful and interesting stuff. And in the process, you learn to see your material in new ways and perhaps think about it differently. And this is what I would really personally love to make happen-- to eventually look at the world in a completely different way.
I'd like to encourage you to fully participate in the course by doing the photographic assignments. As you know, we all learn so much more when we try it ourselves. So we've kept the assignments straightforward and reasonable to accomplish in a limited time span.
And finally, I want to encourage you to relax. In many ways, making pictures is about playing and experimenting. It doesn't have to be perfect every time. And in fact, I often learn the most from my mistakes. So just have fun and enjoy yourself. We look forward to learning with you and to introduce you to new approaches in seeing your work.
