30 photos through a microscope from Nikon's Small World contest

Kevin Hall
Tuesday, October 11, 2011 - 1:14pm

Nikon Small World is an exhibit of some of the best "photography through a microscope" you're ever likely to see. Now in its 37th year, the competition enjoys entries from micro-photographers from over 70 countries around the globe.

Photomicrography allows photographers access to shapes, colors and detail that go unnoticed otherwise. Whereas one hundred people could take a picture of a city's skyline and all could look the same, photomicrographers could take a hundred different pictures of the same subject, and each would look wildly different. Does the reading lens in a DVD-ROM drive strike you as beautiful? It just might under intense magnification, as you'll see in the gallery below.

Last time we showed you the terror that's in the unseen world all around us. This time, let's take a look at the beauty.

More Amazing Photography Galleries

Nikon Small World, via The Big Picture

Photos and captions provided by Nikon Small World.

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Tufting needle eye with yarn. 1x (Photo: Marc van Hove)

Spirogyra sp. (green algae) filaments. 25x (Photo: Marek Mis)

Water droplet containing a pair of mosquito larvae. 5x (Photo: Dr. John H. Brackenbury)

Cethosia biblis (butterfly) dried wing scales. 20x (Photo: Dr. Douglas Clark)

Vanessa atalanta (Red admiral butterfly) egg in Urtica dioica (Stinging nettle) trichomes. 10x (Photo: David Millard)

Primary rat neurons grown as neurospheres. 10x (Photo: Dr. Rowan Orme)

Jumping spider anterior lateral and median eyes. 16x (Photo: Walter Piorkowski)

Internal parts of a wildflower. 100x (Photo: Arik Shapira)

Young Volvox sp. (green algae) colony. 250x (Photo: Wim van Egmond)

Leptodora kindtii (giant waterflea) eye; living specimen. 160x (Photo: Wim van Egmond)

Porites lobata (lobe coral), live specimen displaying tissue pigmentation response with red fluorescence 12x (Photo: James H. Nicholson, won 15th place)

Microchip surface, 3D reconstruction. 500x (Photo: Alfred Pasieka, placed 5th in the contest)

Melosira moniliformis, living specimen. 320x (Photo: Frank Fox, placed 3rd in the competition)

Bovine pulmonary artery endothelial (BPAE) cells fixed and stained for actin, mitochondria, and DNA. 60x (Photo: Dr. Torsten Wittmann)

Chick embryo intestine. 20x (Photo: Poulomi Ray)

DVD-ROM front lens and part of movement coil. 4x (Photo: Haris Antonopoulos)

20GB hard disk read/write head slider. 31x (Photo: Dr. Gregor Overney)

Eyes of a Jumping Spider (Salticus scenicus). 20x (Photo: Dr. Igor Siwanowicz)

Chiloscyllium plagiosum (Whitespotted bamboo shark), embryonic pectoral fin (Photo: Dr. Andrew Gillis)

Natural formed frost crystal. Grew overnight on a fence in -15 degrees C. 5x (Photo: Jesper Grønne)

Fresh water shrimp eye and head. 2x (Photo: Jose R. Almodovar)

Micrasterias apiculata (green alga) cell wall, living specimen. 310x (Photo: Wolfgang Bettighofer)

Litomosoides sigmodontis (filaria worms) inside lymphatic vessels of the mouse ear. 150x (Photo: Dr. Witold Kilarski, placed 17th in the contest)

Cultured cells growing on a bio-polymer scaffold. 63x (Photo: Dr. Christopher Guérin, placed 16th in the contest)

Portrait of a Chrysopa sp. (green lacewing) larva. 20x (Photo: Dr. Igor Siwanowicz, won first place)

Utricularia gibba (bladderwort) bladder. 40x (Photo: Jose R. Almodovar)

Acacia dealbata (Silver Wattle) pollen grains. 40x (Photo: Dr. Marta Guervos)

Mouth of common fly. 100x (Photo: Dr. Havi Sarfaty)

Swallowtail butterfly (family Papilionidae) pupal stage chrysalis, tethered to its pupal home. 63x (Photo: Dr. Willard Strong)

Sugarcane root cross section. 20x (Photo: Debora Leite)