Scientists at play – photographing the q-bio conference

I was delighted to be booked to photograph an evening of the q-bio conference in Santa Fe this weekend.

Held at St John’s College, but organized by the Center for Non-Linear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the event explores cellular information processing and ‘is intended to advance predictive modeling of cellular regulation’ – (no, I don’t really know what that is either, but everyone there obviously did).

Some photographers see these kind of jobs as a bit dull – the photos matter to the organizers and attendees, but they’re not that exciting to the photographer. I don’t agree.

My natural curiosity and my willingness to explore what you can produce under specific constraints always makes me look forward to the shoot. If you think you’re going to get just ordinary images, then you probably will, but if you’re open to trying things, and genuinely interested in what’s going on, then you’ll do better.

The organizers wanted photographs of the biologists enjoying pizza and beer after the daytime sessions, then heading in to take part in the evening events.

These included a brilliant talk (complete with songs) by iconoclastic Israeli scientist Uri Alon, who gave a compelling account of the need to acknowledge the subjective and emotional side to life as a researcher.

And then the attendees broke out into the poster sessions, where their fellow delegates put up posters outlining their projects and then discuss them long into the night.

The organizers used the images as part of a slideshow at the banquet held on the final evening of the conference, and will use them in print and online publicity for next year’s event.

One of the joys of being a photographer is being invited into a world you’d normally never venture into to. This is what drew me to print journalism – just for a little while, you get to explore what other people’s lives are like, and try to understand things enough to tell an interesting and accurate story about it. The same is true with photography.

• do you have an event you’d like photographed professionally? I’d love to talk to you about it.