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Pin-ItThis stunning capture of crystalized L-glutamine and beta-alanine was taken by professional photographer Justin Zoll using a microscope equipped with polarized light illumination. He has been taking images through the microscope for about five years and plans on moving to more sophisticated techniques in the near future. He seems to be doing just fine already!
2020 Photomicrography Competition
13th Place
Crystals formed after heating an ethanol and water solution containing L-glutamine and beta-alanine
Justin Zoll
- Affiliation
- Justin Zoll Photography
Ithaca, New York, USA
- Technique
- Polarized Light
- Magnification
- 4X (Objective Lens Magnification)
12th Place
Human hair
Robert Vierthaler
- Location
- Pfarrwerfen, Salzburg, Austria
- Technique
- Image Stacking
- Magnification
- 20X (Objective Lens Magnification)
The 12th place image is that of a human hair. Or to be more specific, a single strand of Mr. Robert Vierhaler’s (the image creator) daughter’s hair. Mr. Vierhaler works for a steel company and does macro and micro photography as a hobby. This image was created using a modified standard microscope fitted with a bellows attachment and a Nema stepper motor in order to capture numerous images for stacking.
14th Place
Leaf roller weevil (Byctiscus betulae) lateral view
Özgür Kerem Bulur
- Location
- Istanbul, Turkey
- Technique
- Image Stacking, Reflected Light
- Magnification
- 3.7X (Objective Lens Magnification)
This image of a leaf roller weevil was taken by Mr. Ozgur Kerem Bulur using reflected light illumination with image stacking. This particular species of insect was chosen for its chitin structure and unique coloring. Because the chitin (the reflective material that makes up the insect’s protective shell) was so reflective, it was important to pay attention to the characteristics of the light when creating the image.
Top 20
Honorable Mentions
Images of Distinction
Judges
Dr. Dylan Burnette
Assistant Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology Vanderbilt University
Burnette has been using high resolution microscopy to study cells for over 20 years. His laboratory at Vanderbilt University focuses on how cells grow and divide. He is interested in how these processes contribute to the function of heart muscle. He trained as a graduate student with Dr. Paul Forscher at Yale University and as a post-doctoral fellow with Dr. Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Burnette has placed in the Nikon Small World competition eleven times.
Samantha Clark
Photo Editor National Geographic
Clark works on stories about science and the environment. She previously worked on NPR’s photo team and at Pier 24 Photography. Before working in visuals, she was a reporter and radio producer based in the Bay Area of San Francisco.
Sean Greene
Graphics and Data Journalist The Los Angeles Times
Greene covers science, the environment and medicine. He started working for The Los Angeles Times in 2014 and specializes in combining the powers of visual storytelling and the internet to tell meaningful and memorable stories. He’s reported on native oysters, bugs and frog tongues, and helped develop projects such as an interactive map of the Milky Way, a tracker of coronavirus cases in California and a data analysis of the dialogue in the Star Wars movies.
Dr. Christophe Leterrier
Group Leader Institute of Neurophysiopathology at CNRS and Aix-Marseille University
An engineer by training, Dr. Leterrier turned to cell biology and neurobiology for his Ph.D. He studies how neurons are organized at the cellular level and how they differentiate, then build and maintain their incredibly complex arborization. Since 2017, he has led the NeuroCyto lab in Marseille where he applies advanced microscopy techniques to directly observe molecular assemblies at the nanoscale inside neurons.
Ariel Waldman
Chair of the External Council NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts Program
Waldman led an expedition to Antarctica to film microscopic life under the ice. She is the co-author of a National Academy of Sciences report on the future of human spaceflight and the author of the book What’s It Like in Space?: Stories from Astronauts Who’ve Been There. Waldman is the global director of Science Hack Day, a National Geographic Explorer, a member of the San Francisco Microscopical Society, and received an honoree from the Obama White House as a Champion of Change in citizen science.
