Queue the Mad Scientist Music
Sometimes your favorite picture from a shoot is the last one you take. That happens a lot with me where I think I just keep shooting until I am finally satisfied with something and willing to call it quits. This happened on this enterprise piece AP asked me to shoot special for the Chicago Tribune.
The subject was on this researcher growing artificial heart tissue in Petri dishes. All I had to work with was the dude, and his Petri dishes… After a bunch of run-of-the mill environmental portraits in the BSRB Atrium and his dimly lit lab, I was getting desperate. Then, I realized the Petri dishes all had this Koolaid-colored solution in them and that I had this little red LED key-chain light my Mom (bless her heart) pawned off on me last Christmas. “Here you might have a use for this toy”
So I put the Doc into his little lab closet, turned off the lights, and shined the LED from below the Petri dish as he held it. Its a little too dark, and a bit soft, but at a glance the shot works to grab attention. I didn’t know if the Tribune would run the photo, so I included my safety shots in the transmission too.
Oh, and while I was in the lab, one of the research assistants started cutting up a dead mouse. I liked how she used a sheet to cover up the “unpleasantness”, as if the mouse was in surgery. Alas no, she was harvesting its organs.