About Me
I’m a photographer and science lover, particularly engaged with the intersection of the two in visual science communication. I’m interested in finding approaches to sharing science in ways that excite, captivate, and allow people to see and understand the world in new ways. 
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​I've worked as a farmer and raft guide, a roly-poly researcher and podcast maker, and I once lint-rolled a T-rex skeleton during my work at the Smithsonian. I'm a Part 107-certified commercial drone pilot, NOLS graduate, Wilderness First Responder, and an experienced traveler who never passes up a good adventure.

After studying Biology and Geology at Pomona College, I embarked on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship and traveled the Amazon river from source to delta, using photography to tell the story of river science. 

​Since then, I've been working at Berkeley Lab as a photographer and multimedia science communicator. In my spare time I look for other ways to get people excited about seeing through science. Check out my recent work on instagram or my blog, and sign up for my newsletter to stay up to date!

My work has been featured by:
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Recent talks

How Water Shaped the West
My talk at AGU Ignite

This NASA-sponsored SciComm event at the American Geophysical Union conference is designed to keep scientists on their toes with slides that advance every 15 seconds. It was my biggest audience yet, with a full house of several hundred people at the Great American Music Hall in SF.

My Artist Talk with Peak Design

I gave this talk to accompany a gallery show of my photos at the Peak Design flagship store in San Francisco. This recording captures the first half of the talk, about how rivers and watersheds shaped the natural landscapes of the American West.​​

See the images featured in these shows:

Recent Illustrations

Illustrated Cover Art for Nature Climate Change
I developed these illustrations as cover art for the March 2024 issue of Nature Climate Change.
I developed these in collaboration with the authors at Berkeley Lab who  pulled together an unprecedented dataset of measurements from around the arctic circle to show that boreal wetlands have been emitting more methane. As the summers get longer and hotter with climate change, increased vegetation growth and biomass production drives increased anaerobic microbial activity in these swamps.

With my illustration I wanted to capture a sense of languid late summer warmth, while positioning the viewer deep in the overgrown vegetation to give a sense of teeming growth. I also included the two main scientific instruments used to collect these data: gas flux chambers and eddy covariance towers.

Recent Storymaps

Visual Storytelling Work

My work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has given me the chance to teach lessons, create StoryMaps, and document scientific research first-hand. These are two of my recent StoryMaps: 
Power and Promise Beneath the Salton Sea
An educational deep-dive into the exciting possibility of sustainably harvesting lithium from the brine used to generate geothermal electricity.
Field Days: Tracking Weather and Water in the Rockies
A brief look at a day in the life of scientists studying the weather and snowpack that feeds the Colorado River.

My Watershed StoryMap (and covers of Nature and Science!)
My first project with the Watershed Function Science Focus Area at Berkeley Lab told the stories of Natural, Impacted, and Managed water in the Rockies and the American West. 
My photography from this project was also selected for the April 2021 cover of Nature Geoscience and March 2022 cover of Science Advances.

I'm excited about
Science as X-ray vision 
I've long been fascinated by the idea that science can transform how people see. In sharing the mechanisms that underlie everyday life, I hope to help others see the hidden inner workings of their world. Seeing in this way adds wonder and intrigue to even the most familiar subjects, and I aim to harness that feeling to make science communication more engaging and relevant.

I've pursued this idea through my public talks and projects like the Story of Sand, exploring the idea that many things in the natural world have both an "endo-story" (the little world contained within them) and an "exo-story" (the role they play in the world around them).

My latest article

This publication from my Watson Fellowship explores how rivers in the Andes are vital to the Amazon Rainforest downstream, and what might happen if Andean rivers are dammed.

The Watson
I spent much of 2019-2020 on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, traveling the length of the Amazon River and using photography to showcase the science of river systems. 
This project was put on hold for the pandemic, with the exception of a foray along the Colorado River in October 2021. I'm still figuring out how and when I will resume my travels, but my love of rivers and their scientific stories is still going strong.

My newsletter and blog
In 2022 I sent out my first monthly newsletter with a new StoryMap I made about the wonders of beavers.
Every few months since then, I've shared out photo essays, life updates, and my favorite photos that don't make it on social media. Check out my blog and sign up for my newsletter to stay in the loop about future projects.
Photos on this website are the property of Jeremy Snyder and cannot be reproduced or reused without permission.

Sign up for my newsletter

​Want to stay in the loop about my projects and photography? I try to send out one short update every few months about my latest work and the things I'm finding interesting at the moment.