Winning Photo Wows World

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From cells to needle points to insect eyes and everything in between, the top images from the 2023 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition are full of awe-inducing wonder. Photomicrography is the photography of objects under a microscope to produce images at intense levels of magnification.

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Check out some of the top finishers in the 49th annual competition.

First Place: Rodent Optic Nerve Head

This colorful image shows intricate parts of a rodent optic nerve head. The yellow structures are astrocytes, the reds are contractile proteins and the greens are retinal vasculature.

Hassanain Qambari, who captured this image, is a researcher studying diabetic retinopathy, in which high blood sugar causes damage to blood vessels at the back of the eye. It affects around one in three people with diabetes.

Qambari said he experienced challenges photographing vessels near 110 microns, about the thickness of a sheet of standard printer paper. “While the ophthalmic artery in the rodent model presented a technically demanding challenge, we were able to overcome it with persistence and patience,” Qambari said.

Second Place: Matchstick Igniting

This image of the moment of ignition stretches the definition of "moment": it was captured in one eight-thousandth of a second.

O​le Bielfeldt, the photographer behind this image, said on Instagram he had to build a special motion-control camera rig so the matchbox would move while the head of the match stayed still.

Third Place: Breast Cancer Cells

Malgorzata Lisowska was awarded third place for this image displaying close-up breast cancer cells. The image was taken at 40x magnification.

F​ourth Place: Venomous Fangs Of A Small Tarantula

F​ifth Place: Auto-fluorescing Defensive Hairs Covering The Leaf Surface Of Eleagnus Angustifolia Exposed To UV Light

S​ixth Place: Slime Mold Showing Capillitial Fibers Through Its Translucent Peridium

S​eventh Place: Mouse Embryo

E​ighth Place: Caffeine Crystals

N​inth Place: Cytoskeleton Of A Dividing Myoblast

T​enth Place: Motor Neurons Grown In Microfluidic Device For Separation Of Cell Bodies And Axons

To see more images honored by the judges, click here.

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