One of the fascinations of photography as an art or a science is that it enables us to see more than the eye can see.

"The sensitive photographic film is the true retina of the scientist . . . for it possesses all the properties which science could want: it faithfully preserves the images which deposit themselves upon it, and reproduces and multiplies them indefinitely on request; in the radiative spectrum (electromagnetic spectrum) it covers a range more than double that which the eye can perceive and soon perhaps will cover it all: finally it takes advantage of that admirable property which allows the accumulation of events, and whereas our retina erases all impressions more than a tenth of a second old, the photographic retina preserves them and accumulates them over a practically limitless time" PJC Janssen 1888

Ultraviolet fluorescence of tonic water, due to quinine, seen with a long exposure as it is poured into a wine glass.

This is in many ways a forgotten specialisation with the rampant quest for the 'artistic' losing the acquisition of an image by digital or traditional means purely as a way of recording what we see at a point, or extended or shortened point, in time or indeed what we cannot see using the eye alone.

Pierre Jules César Jannsen (1824 -1907) the French Astronomer explained it as follows;

"The photographic plate is the scientist's retina, but a retina far superior to that of the human eye for, on the one hand, it records the phenomenon perceived and, on the other, in certain cases, it catches more than the eye can see."

Photography can and should be used purely as a means of recording what we can see. What we cannot know is whether after it has been captured that image may become more significant like the images taken of the Ernst Stromer's collection of dinosaur bones which were destroyed during the bombing of Munich in the Second World War or the images of the skull of Peking Man.

Photographic recording is a part of a standard methodology in many sciences from medicine to archaeology, geography to forensics. Yet it is not just a matter of recording what we see but thinking about what we are seeing and how best to record it or reveal what we have perceived as it was recorded on a Brunswick Thaler (Type of coin) in 1589

“Of what use are lens and light
To those who lack in mind and sight?”

That many images can be viewed as 'works of art' doesn't detract from their original purpose to inform or visually communicate in support of science.