Bill Youngblood is a very resourceful photographer—not to mention a skilled one. Our cover photo is a case in point.
Commissioned to capture scientist Robert Messing “in his element” (which happens to be a laboratory in the Department of Neurology at the University of California in San Francisco), Youngblood was all set to photograph flasks full of exotic liquids and Petri dishes growing who knows what. But what he found on the day of the photo session was a discrepancy between the media image of what a lab should look like and the way Messing’s lab actually looked.
“Because of some restrictions, we wound up in a side lab,” Youngblood told CT art director Joan Nickerson. “It reminded me of a high-school biology class: beige walls and black counter tops.”
Fortunately for both Youngblood and Messing, there was also a gamma counter—a decidedly non-high school piece of equipment.
“I decided to take advantage of that curious thing and use it as background. And by adding a red filter, I think we were able to transform the counter—as well as those beige walls—into a scene with some sense of mystery and urgency.”
As for the mystery: What is a gamma counter?
“It evidently monitors bacterial growth in each of the vials you see in the foreground,” Youngblood told us. “But for the record, it’s a great prop.”
