Story highlights
Nikon's Small World Competition awards extraordinary microscopic images
The contest is now in its 42nd year
CNN
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The tiny face of a four-day old zebrafish embryo, scales of a butterfly’s wing and magnified coffee crystals – just some of the miniature worlds revealed by the 2016 finalists in Nikon’s annual microscopic images competition.
Over 2,000 photos from around the world were entered as part of the 2016 Nikon Small World Competition, which celebrates the art of microscopic images.
Many of the winning images are both beautiful and practical, through the contribution they made to science or medicine.
Photos were submitted from 70 different countries for the competition and feature insects, human cells, fish and even human cells.
Each picture is an example of photomicrography – microscopic photographs that, in this case, celebrate never-before-seen images of scientific research and the natural world.
A microscopic “selfie” of a zebrafish embryo was announced as the overall winner on Wednesday, taken by United States researcher Dr Oscar Ruiz.
Dr. Ruiz, who studies genetic mutations that cause abnormalities in the human face at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, is hoping that his research involving zebrafish – which inspired his winning photograph – can lead to possible preventive and corrective measures for people with facial deformities such as cleft lip or cleft palate.
The zebrafish embryo, its mouth ajar and its nascent eyes staring into the camera lens, beat out 20 other finalists who were also revealed on Wednesday.
Runners-up included Douglas Moore’s luminous photo depicting a polished piece of Teepee Canyon Agate stone, which came in second, and Rebecca Nutbrown’s third place photo capturing neurons derived from human skin cells.
courtesy Nikon Small World
This is the 40th year that camera maker Nikon has held its Small World competition, which seeks the best magnified images melding science and art. Last year, freelance photographer Wim van Egmond
won first place for this magnified image of
marine plankton. "For 20 years, I've been looking through a microscope, and every time I see things I haven't seen before,"
van Egmond told CNN.
courtesy Nikon Small World
This winning image of a zebrafish embryo was injected with vibrant colors based on depth to convey spatial information, as well as to make it visually appealing.
Dr. Jennifer L. Peters, one of the image's co-creators, said the photo "not only captures the beauty of nature, but is topical and biomedically relevant."
courtesy Nikon Small World
"My art causes a dissonance for its viewer -- a conflict between the culturally imprinted perception of an insect as something repulsive and ugly with a newly acquired admiration of the beauty of its form," said Dr. Igor Siwanowicz, referring to his winning image of a
common green lacewing. In real life, the bug's head was just 1.3 millimeters long, requiring great skill to dye and fix it in place for the shot.
courtesy Nikon Small World
This image of a mosquito heart was magnified at 100x. "Mosquitoes remain one of the greatest scourges of mankind," photographer
Jonas King said in 2010. "Malaria infects hundreds of millions of people annually and is believed to have a major impact on the economies of endemic regions."
courtesy Nikon Small World
More than 2,000 entries were submitted for the prize in 2009. That year, the winning entry showed a
thale cress anther, the male sex organ of a small flowering plant. "As part of my work as a research scientist, I have been taking photographs through the microscope for almost 30 years to observe the processes in living cells," researcher and photographer Heiti Paves said.
courtesy Nikon Small World
This exquisite image shows Pleurosigma, or marine diatoms, that were magnified 200 times. It was taken using darkfield and polarized light.
courtesy Nikon Small World
In 2007, first place went to this image of a double transgenic mouse embryo at 18.5 days.
Gloria Kwon, a researcher at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Institute, used widefield microscopy and red and green fluorescence.
courtesy Nikon Small World
This detailed image is the cell nuclei of a mouse colon magnified 740 times. It was taken by Paul Appleton, a regular entrant to the competition who has contributed a
number of "Images of Distinction."
courtesy Nikon Small World
An up-close image of the
common housefly took top honors in 2005. The same year, Nikon added a new award category of "Images of Distinction" to recognize some of the more notable entrants.
courtesy Nikon Small World
The 2004 winner was a failed experiment, according to Seth A. Coe-Sullivan, who at the time was a graduate assistant at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The image is of quantum dot nanocrystals deposited on a silicon substrate and magnified 200 times using light reflectance. "The only reason I kept it was to document the failure. I wish I could say I spent hours getting it right, but that wasn't the case,"
Coe-Sullivan told Advanced Imaging Pro.
courtesy Nikon Small World
Serial place-getter Torsten Wittmann won with this shot in 2003 of magnified mouse cells.
courtesy Nikon Small World
Thomas Deerinck won first prize with his
first entry, a portion of a rat's brain, in 2002. He's now one of the competition's most prolific winners, and in 2008 joined the judging panel. "Aesthetics is obviously a big part of the judging, but almost as important is the technical merit of the image and how difficult or rare it was to capture," Deerinck told CNN. Capturing microscopic images requires patience, steady hands and a "lot of preparation and persistence," he said. "One of the jobs of a scientist is to convey and communicate information in a concise and accurate manner, and it helps on occasion if it also happens to be beautiful science."
courtesy Nikon Small World
Fresh-water rotifer feeding among debris
courtesy Nikon Small World
Avicennia marina (mangrove) leaf
courtesy Nikon Small World
Newt lung cell in mitosis (five different structures)
courtesy Nikon Small World
Endothelial cells
courtesy Nikon Small World
Mouse fibroblasts
courtesy Nikon Small World
Doxorubin in methanol and dimethylbenzenesulfonic acid
courtesy Nikon Small World
Larva of Pleuronectidae
courtesy Nikon Small World
Cross section of very young beech
courtesy Nikon Small World
Fossil fusulinids in limestone
courtesy Nikon Small World
10-year old preparation of barbital, fenacetine, valium and acetic acid
courtesy Nikon Small World
Polyurethane elastic fiber bundle
courtesy Nikon Small World
Crystals evaporated from a solution of magnesium sulfate and tartaric acid
courtesy Nikon Small World
Multiple exposure of a knitting-machine needle
courtesy Nikon Small World
Gold residue and gold-coated bubbles in a glassy matrix
courtesy Nikon Small World
Crystals of influenza virus neuraminidase isolated from terns
courtesy Nikon Small World
Live water mount of Hydra viridissima capturing Daphnia pulex (water flea)
courtesy Nikon Small World
Formalin-fixed whole mount of a spiral nematode (multiple exposure)
courtesy Nikon Small World
Inclusions of goethite and hematite in Brazilian agate
courtesy Nikon Small World
Suctorian attached to a stalk of red algae, encircled by a ring of diatoms
courtesy Nikon Small World
Silverberry scaly hair whole mount
courtesy Nikon Small World
Collapsed bubbles from an annealed experimental electronic sealing glass
courtesy Nikon Small World
Larvacean within its feeding structure, dyed with red organic carmine that the larvacean syphoned in while filter feeding
courtesy Nikon Small World
Stalked protozoan attached to a filamentous green algae with bacteria on its surface
courtesy Nikon Small World
Gold, vaporized in a tungsten boat, in a vacuum evaporator
courtesy Nikon Small World
Crystals of rutile (titanium dioxide) and tridymite (a polymorph of quartz) in a cobalt-rich glass
courtesy Nikon Small World
Encysted parasitic roundworm (trichinella spirals)
courtesy Nikon Small World
Oxalic acid crystals during precipitation
Biologist and science writer, Joe Hanson, who was a judge, said picking a winner was like choosing a “major league baseball all-star team.”
“Truly the best of the best. Beyond looking for technical proficiency and innovative techniques, most of all I was looking for images that told a story, that made me feel something or ask a question beyond science,” he said.
Nikon Instruments’ Eric Flem said every year they were looking for a winner with something special.
“Every year we’re looking for that image that makes people lean forward in their seats, sparks their curiosity, and leads them to ask new questions,” Flem said.
“Whether an image provides a rare glimpse into cutting-edge medical research as we saw from our first place winner, or reveals a fun ‘too-close-for-comfort’ look into the eyes of a spider…each image evokes a powerful reaction from our judges.”