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Pictures We Love: Seeing Science
As the year began to come to a close, we asked National Geographic staff who work closely with photography—through the magazine, Your Shot, News, Travel, and Proof—to choose a photo from 2015 that they just can’t stop thinking about. There’s no formula for what makes an image resonate—it can be a piercing gaze, the perfect light, or a tender moment that strikes a chord with our editors. Over the coming days, we’ll reveal the 2015 photographs they found most memorable and why.
“Beyond Taste Buds: The Science of Delicious,” December 2015
PHOTOGRAPH BY BRIAN FINKE
Sarah Leen, Director of Photography, National Geographic Magazine
It was a very tough this year to choose just one image, as we had so much strong work to choose from, like the powerful images by Peter Muller for our Ebola story, Robert Clark’s challenging yet quirky photos about taxidermy, and the amazing, surprising photographs of Lagos, Nigeria, by Robin Hammond.
But one image jumps out for me because it was so fresh and unexpected: the image of the blue tongue by Brian Finke that leads our story “The Science of Delicious.”
When we began this story I had heard about the blue-stained tongue test that’s used to determine who is a supertaster by counting the number of papillae, small bumps that contain our taste buds, that a person has. Supertasters have many more papillae than non-tasters, and about 25 percent of people are supertasters.
Illustrating science stories is not an easy task. It requires going into mundane spaces and trying to bring out something that’s as wonderful and intriguing as if you’d been sent to some exotic locale. So when we heard about the blue tongue test we knew we had the opportunity to create something unique. And we knew just the photographer to assign to do it.
Brooklyn-based Finke has now done three stories for us, and they’ve all been about food, one of his particular passions. Finke has the ability to go into very normal and sometimes bland situations and—with his particular point of view, sense of light, and cheeky attitude—bring back images that are surprising and grab your attention. The blue tongue is one such image for me.
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