Nick Russell photographer | writer | science lover | travelernick at nhvzr dot net
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Light & Noise
I serve as the President of Light & Noise, Inc., a photography and video production company that specializes in scientific and educational subjects. Founded with Charles Witherspoon, Light & Noise shares our Brooklyn-based green screen studio with our sister company, MedQuest, and primarily uses the space to produce visually engaging, high yield medical education courses. […]
Media & Technology Policy
As our society increasingly relies on technology for communication and access to other basic human rights, we find ourselves standing at a crossroads: our policy choices today will determine the future of equity and democracy in ways we can hardly imagine. My part-time position as a Program Manager for the Media Democracy Fund allows me […]
Nuclear History
Nuclear physics and the context of its development during World War II and the Cold War continue to drive fantasies and the reality of scientific research. By artistically documenting historical research apparatus, isotope production facilities, and disaster sites, I hope to shed light on the tremendously difficult questions raised by the application of nuclear energy in the 20th century. To […]
Radio Astronomy
The telescopes scientists use to look into the universe are often almost as beautiful as the subjects they study. During a 3-week residency at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia, my creative partner Charles Witherspoon and I created hundreds of large format negatives to be used with alternative printing processes like […]
Photographic Process
My photographic approach combines large format film, cutting-edge digital tools, and alternative printing processes like platinum/palladium and uranium to create unique and often haunting images of science and technology. Despite over a decade of professional experience with Photoshop, my heart still lies in the darkroom. The high resolution of large format negatives combined with the intoxicating tonal range provided by some […]
Summer of Science
During the summer of 2009, fellow science writer Lizzie Wade and I drove 15,000 miles across America to take the pulse of American high energy physics as the Large Hadron Collider slowly rumbled to life in Europe. After visits to eight DOE national laboratories, a NASA lab, the Very Large Array and the abandoned site […]
Writing
Writing is a joy, but most of my work is for small private audiences. One favorite publicly accessible example, my review of Eric Schlosser’s Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety can be found on the New York Daily News site.
Great Ape Cognitive Research Trends
In 2007 and 2008, I conducted a large-scale meta-study of great ape cognitive research by reading and categorizing the abstracts of every great ape paper in the PsycINFO database published between 1992 and 2006. In addition to significant growth of the field, I found an increasing emphasis on socially-oriented research. Though studies concerning physical cognition […]
The Epistemic Consequences of Genetic Patenting
The legal acceptance of patents on genetic material unleashed a flood of funding for basic research into genetics and ultimately led to a number of successful medical diagnostics and treatments. However, conducting basic research within an explicitly capitalist framework while conforming to the specific requirements of patents vs. publications places particular pressures on the subjects, methods and results […]