Journal of Biocommunication Showcase

Ted Kinsman
BCA's 2019 Louis Schmidt Laureate
   
Ted Kinsman

The Louis Schmidt Committee of the BioCommunications Association is pleased to announce that Associate Professor Ted Kinsman is the 2019 Louis Schmidt Laureate. Ted Kinsman has a BS in Physics and a MS in Science Education. He worked as an optical engineer, a physicist, and a high school physics instructor before joining the teaching faculty at Rochester Institute of Technology. Ted was hired at RIT in 2013 in the Photographic Sciences department and teaches classes in high speed photography, photo instrumentation, and scanning electron microscopy, as well as other technology and imaging related subjects. As a scientist, Kinsman's work focuses on using images to teach science-related subjects and how to solve problems.

Kinsman's photographic work explores the boundaries of what is possible using technology to make photographs. His work has been featured in countless books, magazines and in many online publications. His work has appeared on The Discovery Channel, Crime Scene Investigations (CSI), The X-Files, South Park, The Tyra Banks Show, ABC, NBC, PBS, CBS and the British Broadcasting Corporation. Recently, he contributed work to The Frozen Planet series and James Cameron's Avatar movie. He is also a frequent author of "how to" articles and contributed a chapter for Laboratory Imaging and Photography: Best Practices for Photomicrography and More, Focal Press, 2016.

The recipient of numerous awards, Kinsman won the 2015 National Science Foundation's Imaging Science Contest with an x-ray image of a turtle with eggs.

Kinsman's recent book, Cannabis: Marijuana Under the Microscope, Schiffer Publishing 2018, shares his fresh and visually stunning photographs exploring the extraordinary beauty and diversity of the world's most controversial plant: Cannabis salvia. Cutting-edge scanning electron microscope images, combined with light micrographs and X-rays, are shared in this beautiful book exploring this plant and the intrigue surrounding it.

Applying physics to photography remains one of his specialties. Initially he started his imaging company to publish science books. Within a few years though, the focus changed to the production of high quality time-lapse films of flowers blooming. This footage was widely distributed and has appeared in thousands of commercials. In 1999 his work moved into the area of educational science photography. In this new initiative, scanning electron microscopy and radiography became the focus of his photography. More than 38 stock companies represent Ted's work both nationally and internationally. Numerous books and magazines including Scientific American, Science News, New York Times, and National Geographic routinely use his images.

© Ted Kinsman, ScienceSource.com
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This Louis Schmidt Award – the highest given in the BCA – is named for the second BCA President. It is awarded annually for outstanding contributions to the progress of biological communications. The selection of the recipient each year is made by a committee composed of the nine most recent winners. This selection is subject to the approval of the Executive Board. Mr. Schmidt was in charge of photography at the Rockefeller Institute in New York City and was a founding member of the BPA (Biological Photographic Association, later to be renamed the BioCommunications Association) in 1931. Mr. Schmidt always had an abiding interest in sharing his photographic knowledge with his students.

The Water Flea (Daphnia magna) A spinning golf ball is flow tested in a two-dimensional fluid flow
A .22 caliber bullet hitting a hot pepper. Chemical waves in a Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction
Southern Pacific Rattlesnake (Crotalus helleri). An optical photograph is combined with a high resoultion x-ray of the same specimen. Over-inflating a balloon until it burst.
Calcite (red), willemite (green) and franklinite (black) from New Jersey, photographed under short-wave ultraviolet light. X-ray of a Depp Water Crab
Fireflies in a field in New York State in early June. X-ray of a freshwater drum (Aplodinotus grunniens), the only freshwater fish in the family Sciaenidae.
X-ray of an energy efficient light bulb. This bulb uses light-emmitting diode (LED) technology. This is a false color x-ray. False Color X-ray of a Snapping Turtle (Chelydra serpetina)
False Color X-ray of Hellebore (Helleborus orientalis) Flowers. X-ray Pitcher Plant Flowers (Sarracenia purpurea).
X-ray of an American Lobster (Homarus americanus). An x-ray of Rockweed Seaweed (Ascophyllum nodosum) with false color.
SEM Image of Catnip (Nepeta cataria) of the mint family. Field of view is 2mm. SEM Image of a Micrometeorite (diameter is 300um)
An electrical spark created when a sheet of photographic film is placed between two high voltage electrodes. Initially, the film builds up a charge on the surface and acts like as a capacitor. A polliwog swimming in an experimental polarizing water-based fluid.
The leaf of a hops plant (Humulus lupulus) was dyed with fluorescein dye and photographed in UV light. Thin film interference on soap film. Bands of color are created by white light shining on a film of soap.
This is an antique aluminum tea pot (shown in x-ray). A focused-stacked Passion Flower.
Color-enhanced SEM of the surface of a marijuana plant (Cannabis sative). SEM of pumpkin skin (Cucurbita sp.) Magnification is 100x and field of view is 2mm wide.