pictures we love: seeing science

With the end of the year, we asked National Geographic staff who worked closely with photography through magazines, your photos, news, tours, and chose a photo from 2015 that they couldn\'t stop thinking.
There is no formula to explain what resonates with the image, it can be harsh eyes, perfect light, or gentle moments that resonate with our edits.
Over the next few days we will be showing their most memorable 2015 photos and why.
Sarah Lane, director of photography at National Geographic magazine, is having a hard time choosing just one photo this year, because we have a lot of strong pieces to choose from, just like Peter Mueller\'s powerful photos for our Ebola story, Robert Clark presents challenging but quirky photos about specimen making, as well as amazing photos, amazing photo taken by Robin Hammond in Lagos, Nigeria.
But there was an image that popped up for me because it was so fresh and unexpected: Brian Fink\'s blue tongue image led our story-delicious science.
When we started the story, I heard about blue.
Stained tongue test, used to determine who is a super tasting by calculating the number of nipples, small lumps contain our taste buds.
Super savors have more nipples than non-savors
About 25% of people are super savors.
It is not an easy task to explain scientific stories.
It needs to go into the mundane space and try to come up with something as wonderful and fun as you were sent to an exotic place.
So when we hear about the blue tongue test, we know we have a chance to create something unique.
All we know is to ask the photographer to do it. Brooklyn-
Fink, based in Fink, has now done three stories for us, and they are all talking about food, which is one of the things he particularly loves.
Fink has the ability to get into very normal, and sometimes quite bland situations, and bring back surprising images with his unique perspective, Light sense and cheeky attitude, attracting your attention
The blue tongue is such an image for me.
Todd James, senior photo editor for National Geographic magazine Science, every story I edit for National Geographic magazine has photos I like, but this bee was taken by Anand Varma, one of the best surprises of the year.
It\'s science, but it looks like opera, full of drama, beauty, intimacy and lingering problems.
Things look really bad, but we\'re not quite sure what it is.
If in the first scene, the first scene, you do not ask the answer to the second act is the question of surprise, you do not play.
I forgot who said it, but varma\'s photo perfectly laid the stage for the next scientific mystery.
It shows that a calming Bee is placed in a paper cup with holes in the bottom that allow carbon dioxide to enter.
The syringe applies a small drop of mosquito pesticide to the abdomen of the bee to test its effect on the bee.
We began to see, understand, and share how scientists studied the barriers to group collapse.
Varma gave us a front.
Show us the latest bee research.
But he also forced us to think of bees as individuals, not as people without names. and-
There are labeled specimens in the museum. His scaled-
Drama lights tempt us with equal parts of art and science.
Then he cheated us with perspective and scale.
All of a sudden, without full awareness, we stopped staring at the bugs.
We see eyes. to-
Look at each other with a bee and feel empathy.
Natural History advanced photo editor Kathy Moran National Geographic magazine always has some images you know right away that will be the final presentation in the process of telling a story, hoping to be the page of the magazine.
Photographer Lynn Johnson\'s pictures of twins Viva and Felix were one of my moments.
This is part of the story we filmed on the baby\'s brain, all of which have been discovered over the past decade about how babies learn.
Instead of recording babies in the lab, Lynn chose to focus on children in real situations.
The babies operate on their own schedule, not the photo studio, so she is in close contact with these children and their families.
In the course of the story, she spent hours with Viva and Felix, basically watching them grow from babies to toddlers.
Their parents let her in and entrusted the children to her.
The time she invested made the image possible.
The horizontal stripes on their pajamas, the vertical lines on the background fence, the way they were framed by swing poles and restricted to the barrel seat, their lovely emoticons and emotions.
This frame attracts you, but this moment makes you smile.