By Matthew Phelan Senior Science Reporter For Dailymail.Com
00:17 20 Oct 2023, updated 00:34 20 Oct 2023
A miniature crystal castle of golden rutile quartz. The dark phosphorescent armor of a blue-black weevil. Slime molds growing spores that look like rich caramel apples. An otherworldly alien pineapple, nested as the stamen and stigma of an Hibiscus flower bud.
These eerily beautiful images — and over 80 more — were honored this year as part of the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition.
The Japanese camera-maker and imaging technology firm has held the competition, which spotlights the photographic achievements of those taking images through a microscope, for nearly half a century since 1974.
For this year’s competition, an estimated 1,900 photos were submitted to an open call by photographers and scientists from 72 countries. The pictures were then judged by a five-person panel that included a Princeton cell biologist and the photo editor for the BBC’s Science Focus magazine.
The top award for this year went to neuroscientist Hassanain Qambari, a researcher at the Lions Eye Institute’s Centre for Ophthalmology and Visual Science in Perth, Australia. Qambari’s picture, a microscopic, compound photo of a rodent’s optic nerve-head taken via confocal microscopy, also had a practical purpose: aiding patients with diabetes.
Qambari’s work at the Lions Eye Institute has focused on the issue of diabetic retinopathy, a complication from diabetes that can lead to blurry vision or blindness due to damages in the blood vessels near the back of the eye.
‘Current diagnostic criteria and treatment regimens for diabetic retinopathy are limited to the late-stage appearance of the disease,’ Qambari said in a news release, ‘with irreversible damage to retinal microvasculature and function.’
He hopes his retinal imaging work will aid in the early detection and reversal of the disease, which impacts approximately 1 in 5 people with diabetes.
A literally blistering close-up of the tip of a match as it ignites along a matchbox took the second-place prize, a submission from German digital artist Ole Bielfeldt.
Third place went to a healthcare consultant based in Warsaw, Poland, Malgorzata Lisowska, for her image of a serendipitous valentine growing within a cluster of breast cancer cells.
But all of the top 86 images from Nikon’s competition this year are marvels to behold. Below are twelve that the DailyMail.com can’t stop thinking about.
NIKON’S SMALL WORLD IN MOTION CONTEST
The Nikon International Small World Competition launched in 1975 to celebrate photographers who use a light microscope, also known as photomicrographers.
In 2011, Nikon announced it would start accepting movies taken through the microscope as a new category.
This category, called Small World in Motion accepts any video or digital time-lapse photography taken through the microscope.
Photographers can use any type of light microscopy technique, including phase contrast, polarised light, fluorescence, interference contrast, darkfield, confocal, deconvolution, and mixed techniques, as well as record any subject matter.