NATURAL SCIENCES SHOT LIST

Below are sample shot lists often requested by clients focused on the natural world and the physical sciences. These include educational and academic publishers, science media outlets, museums, environmental organizations, research institutions, and teams producing content on meteorology, physics, chemistry, habitats, climate, geology, and astronomy.

If you choose to join the Science Source photographer team, one of our editors will work with you to create a targeted shot list or creative brief that highlights your strengths and interests in capturing scientific and environmental subjects.

ILLUSTRATION - 2D, 3D AND ANIMATION/VIDEO

  • Endangered Wildlife

  • Dinosaurs

  • Prehistoric Life

  • Geologic Era

  • Animal birth

  • High speed video of animal motion such as frogs leaping, birds flying, flying squirrels, bats, insects, etc.

  • Tree or scene going through seasons

  • Predator-prey interaction

  • Extreme weather (tornados, hurricanes, etc.)

  • Natural disasters (earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, avalanches, etc.)

  • Tick feeding to engorgement

  • Thunderstorm

  • Shrinking ozone layer

  • Flower, plant growth

PHOTOGRAPHY

Quick Top 5 (in no particular order)

1. tropism in plants (phototropism, geotropism, thigmotropism, etc), both before and after

2. invasive or problematic alien species (feral pigs, rampaging rabbits, more in list below)

3. cut and uncut precious gems, especially famous ones, large ones, rare ones

4. bioluminescence, fluorescence, phosphorescence, in animals and rocks

5. global warming consequences (see below for details)

Earth Science:  identified minerals and rocks, both close-up on neutral backgrounds and cropping out in their environments.  Also rock layers in road cuts and cliffs, showing folds, faults or unconformities.  Landforms, including river valleys, especially in comparison to glacial valleys, plus drumlins, eskers, fault-block mountains and the basin & range area.

Ecosystem/Food Chain:  rainforest with lots of different plants and animals in the same photo is always the request, but hard to come by.  Try to have a colorful, charismatic something in the corner (flower, butterfly, frog, birds, jaguar?) to make it say both "double-page spread" and "look, kids, biodiversity!"  Food chain is also tough.  Plants, herbivore eating plants, then something eating that herbivore, then that animal eaten by a bigger predator.  Hard to do in one photo, but sequences or illustrations can make it work.

Global Warming:  anything that will illustrate the consequences of our changing climate.  Drought in California; trees killed by spreading insects, adding to increased fire danger; melting glaciers and receding snowpack; rising sea levels swamping low-lying islands in the Pacific; polar bears on thin ice, ice floes or swimming;  other animals dealing with temperature changes.

Invasive Species and Spreading Pests:  all the boring insects eating our trees (emerald ash borer, sirex woodwasp, Asian long-horned beetle, adelgids and bark beetles) the escaped plants invading our forests and parks (garlic mustard, japanese knotweed, mile-a-minute vine, cogon grass, giant hogweed), and the bilge-water stowaways invading the seas (zebra mussels, quagga mussels, chinese mitten crabs, round goby, tunicates and seaweeds).  There are more and more examples every day; keep an eye on the news, and check out the nice lists at www.invasive.org.

Endangered Species:  especially newly-listed species (either by the US or IUCN), critically endangered species, recently extinct species, or newly-discovered species.

Baby Animals:  generally clients want the post-newborn, clean and fluffy stage, but it is always good have a few newborns and hatching hatchlings, too.  Both wild & domesticated species/farm animals are welcome.  Also, tiny baby marsupials in and out of the pouch, especially kangaroos and other unusual/Australian species (we have many Virginia opossums).  Don't forget parents taking care of their young - especially the hard-to-get happy family shots of both parents with the babies/chicks.

Animal Life Cycles:  mostly animals that undergo some kind of metamorphosis (frogs, salamanders, butterflies and other insects), but we've also been asked for the same puppy at a variety of ages up to a year, as well as fish (salmon/trout, always popular) and even reptiles (iguanas, pet snakes, etc.).  A good insect sequence would be egg, hatching egg, early instar, late instar, pupa/chrysalis, emerging adult, and then adult.  Mating adults and a female laying eggs would be helpful, too.  For frogs/toads/salamanders, it would be similar:  eggs; hatching eggs; early larva with no legs; two-legged tadpole; four-legged tadpole/froglet; adult; and then mating adults spawning.  For the fish, eggs, hatching eggs, young fry (with yolk sac), older fry and then adult fish. 

Intro to Botany:  plant life cycles, too, from seed to plant to flower to fruit, unripe, ripe, then cut open to show the seeds again (and then made into pie, in the case of the perennial favorites, apples & pumpkins).  Also popular are oak trees, showing an acorn, a sprouting acorn, seedling/sapling, and then a mature tree, all of the same species.  Seeds and acorns should be close-ups, of one or a few, on a neutral background or maybe in a clean hand.  Also needed are sequences illustrating growth like phototropism, with before and after photos of the plant bending towards the sun/light/window, or plants opening & closing their leaves in response to touch, light or water.  Another favorite is one plant, like a tulip, daffodil or other garden flower familiar to kids, showing the whole plant - leaves, stem and flower (and sometimes even roots, with the soil cut away), to illustrate the idea of "plant".

Sequences:  not only plant & animal life cycles, but also the same place or tree in four seasons, a tree casting different shadows over the course of a day, a park before & after litter clean-up, high and low tide in the same location, the desert (or anywhere, really) before and after a good rainstorm.  Anything you can think of, as long as they are clean, colorful and dramatic, showing a sense of passing time, aging and growing, or whatever the concept may be.  More than 10 images is usually too many, and the client gets overwhelmed, so pick the best ones in which you can see that something is happening.

Action:  birds in flight (especially songbirds and colorful parrots), monkeys swinging in trees or dangling by their tails, elephants and rhinos charging (but don't annoy the wildlife), slithering snakes, peregrine falcons or water birds diving, big cats chasing prey (or small cats, for that matter), frogs and grasshoppers jumping and other exciting activities are all welcome.  Especially popular are images where the motion is toward the camera, and/or with eye contact.  John has technical advice:  Motion can be frozen by using flash or a hight shutter speed, blurred when using a slow shutter speed, or ghosted by using a combination of flash and slow shutter speed (preferably with rear-curtain synchronization).  if you can shoot all three ways, so much the better.

Behavior:  exotic charging elephants are all well and good, but don't forget our common backyard species.  Every fall clients want squirrels burying nuts, and every spring they need groundhogs coming out of their dens and robins building nests and eating worms.  Also popular are woodpeckers pecking, opossums playing dead, skunks spraying in your general direction, and raccoons/deer/bears/coyotes rooting around in your garden and/or trash (but again, don't annoy or bait the wildlife).  Horned lizards that squirt blood from their eyes and chemical-spewing bombardier beetles are on every defensive-behavior list we get, and we can still use glowing fireflies and floating water-striders.

Miscellaneous:  close-ups of animals (eyes, ears, noses, feet/paws, etc); beautiful, clean fish tanks of tropical fish; goldfish in bowls; terrariums with plants and/or exotic pets (lizards, spiders); things that live under rocks, with the rock flipped over, showing them as a community; bird eggs (please don't pillage the nests); close-up, silhouettable, single insects (especially bees, ants and ladybugs) to illustrate their various insect parts, and individual plant leaves, for identification purposes.  Also, plants and animals that are being investigated for medicinal use, both live in their habitats and close-ups of the parts used medicinally.