Small things

Small World is an annual photomicography competition sponsored by Nikon, and in its many galleries you can see all the winners and honorable mentions going back to 1977. It's a great collection of some really outstanding images.

Below: Deformation of a polyethylene folio, Spirorbis sp. (aquatic worm), leaf scales of olive (Eleagnus), and Drosophila virilis (fruit fly) sperm.
Via 30gms.





There are also the Biomedical Image Awards, another collection of beautiful award-winning microphotography images. From the website:

The winners of the Awards challenge the public perspective that scientists don't have an artistic side. Working every day with microscopes and imaging technology, these biologists have been able to capture stunning images through a blend of original and innovative techniques.

Despite the obvious visual appeal of the pictures, their primary purpose is investigation. The images are from research projects with the ultimate goal of helping to improve healthcare through new forms of prevention, treatment and vaccination.

Below: bread mold, damaged nerve cells, and a cancer cell.






Plant Cellular Anatomy is a large, unannotated collection of one biologist's images of brightly stained plant cells. Though presented as science rather than art, they are beautiful more or less by default.





Cellular Visions: The Inner Life of a Cell is an eight-minute cinematic rendering of cellular biological processes created for Harvard biology students. The stills are nice, but what really makes it is the animation -- the way the proteins and globules and cell-parts swim, glide, coil and curve, join and separate, and jostle around. The project was an attempt to render cellular activity in a more dramatic way than the usual technical demonstrations, complete with a musical score. Of course, what would be really nice is knowing what it all is...
Via Pruned.