I found my
internship by contacting Dr. David Adamski in the Entomology Dept. at the
Museum of Natural History. Initially
there were not any internships involving scientific illustration however there
was an imaging internship with Elijah Talamas. When I heard about the
opportunity, I decided to take it so
I could get my foot in the door at the museum.
The National
Museum of Natural History (NMNH) is part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. The museum serves both as a research institute and a public
museum focusing on education about the natural world. Specifically, I interned in the Entomology Dept,
Hymenoptera Unit (includes ants, wasps, and bees). ElijahΚΌs current project is to document and
image the rare and valuable Platygaster wasps specimens of the museum
collection. His photographs will eventually be published in research papers,
displayed in the lab, and collected in an online database for research.
My responsibilities as an imaging intern were to photograph each insect
specimen from three different
angles, composite and edit images in Photoshop, and finally upload them to a
public research database. These are
the steps taken for each insect specimen: retrieving the insect specimens from their
storage drawers, removing their labels, positioning the specimens under the
microscope, transfer the arranged specimen to the camera bed, photograph,
process the image with the camera software, and finally edit the image in
Photoshop.
Although I
only worked on this one imaging project throughout the internship, I covered
around 7-8 different families of
these wasps and documented at least 60 different
species of wasps.
With my
experience at the NMNH, I am most proud of my contributions to the image database.
I was recently told that one of my images was used in the research of another
scientist studying these wasps. One of the most important things I have learned
from this internship is to keep your options open and be willing to explore a
new field of creation. After my
internship experiences, I plan to continue imaging specimens with Elijah and
continue making connections in the Museum. In the future, I would like to keep
collaborating with scientists and mesh my interests of art & science
together.