#ScientistAtWork photo competition

• Establish a connection with your subject. Make them feel comfortable for a candid shot.
• Understand the environment’s light. Use it to bring out detail in the scene.
• Capitalize on colours. Look for chromatic contrast, union and metaphor in colours.
• Use a tripod. Tools such as these stabilize your camera and will help to avoid blur or framing mistakes.
• Find a clean background. A busy background can distract from the subject.

• Play with camera angles and perspective. Try to be inventive, and look beyond standard ‘stock photography’ images.
• Photograph at the golden hour when shooting outdoors. A low angle of sunlight often creates warm, diffuse light and interesting shading.
• Remember the rule of thirds. Split your frame into thirds, and fill some — but not all — of them with your subject.
• Keep the subject’s eyes in focus. They’re often the best way to bring a viewer close to the subject.
• Shoot, check, re-compose, re-shoot. Take many photos using different angles and ideas to catch the best one.

More inspiration might come from the winners of our 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2024 and 2025 competitions.

About the image
For a year in the Ethiopian highlands, Bing Lin followed gelada monkeys with a digital notepad. “We did focal follows,” Lin explains. “You follow a monkey around for 15 minutes recording exactly what it does, who it interacts with, what it eats, where it walks. And then, you move on to a different monkey.” Lin took a break, as storms gathered, to photograph one of these processions in action.
_{(Credit: Bing Lin)}