Pictures: Best Micro-Photos of 2011

1st Place: Lacewing Portrait
Image courtesy Igor Siwanowicz, Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology/Nikon Small World
Magnified 20 times, a green lacewing larva's mandibles look fierce in this winning picture from the 2011 Small World Microphotography Competition, whose top images were announced Wednesday.
The tiny subject landed on Igor Siwanowicz's hand one day and began biting him, prompting the photographer and biochemist to place the insect in a test tube he keeps in his pocket for just such occasions.
Back at the lab, Siwanowicz, of Madison, Wisconsin, carefully fixed and dyed the now dead lacewing for the photo—no easy task, as the bug's head measured just 1.3 millimeters in length.
"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," he said in a statement.
Sponsored by Nikon, the annual Small World contest honors pictures taken with light microscopes "that successfully showcase the delicate balance between difficult scientific technique and exquisite artistic quality."
(Related: "Pictures: Best Micro-Photos of 2010.")
Published October 6, 2011
2nd Place: Blade of Grass
Image courtesy Donna Stolz, University of Pittsburgh/Nikon Small World
Fine strands within a blade of grass are enlarged 200 times in a fluorescent microphoto, which earned the University of Pittsburgh's Donna Stolz second place in the Small World contest.
The photograph is among 92 winners in this year's photomicrograph competition, which fielded entries from people in 70 countries.
(See winning pictures from the 2009 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition.)
Published October 6, 2011
3rd Place: Algae
Image courtesy Frank Fox, Trier University/Nikon Small World
A living specimen of the algae species Melosira moniliformis (right) is magnified 320 times in a prizewinning microphoto by Frank Fox of the Trier University of Applied Sciences in Germany.
Top images from the 2011 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition will be exhibited in a full-color calendar and in a U.S. museum tour.
Published October 6, 2011
4th Place: Liverwort
Image courtesy Robin Young, University of British Columbia/Nikon Small World
They may look like lizard feet, but these colorful, branching patterns festoon liverwort, a type of plant. The University of British Columbia's Robin Young magnified liverwort 20 times to capture the award-winning picture.
(See winning pictures from the 2008 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition.)
Published October 6, 2011
5th Place: Microchip Surface
Image courtesy Alfred Pasieka, Nikon Small World
Resembling a funhouse maze, a 3-D reconstruction of a microchip's surface is magnified 500 times in an image by Germany's Alfred Pasieka. As in past years, a panel of journalists and scientists chose the 2011 Small World award winners.
Published October 6, 2011
6th Place: Cracked Solar Cell Films
Image courtesy Dennis Callahan, California Institute of Technology/Nikon Small World
Cracked and magnified 50 times, solar cell films become abstract art in the sixth-place picture, taken by Dennis Callahan of the California Institute of Technology. The films contain gallium arsenide, a mixture of the elements gallium and arsenic that acts as a semiconductor in solar cells.
Published October 6, 2011
7th Place: Mouse Nerve Fiber
Image courtesy Gabriel Luna, U.C. Santa Barbara/Nikon Small World
Magnified 40 times with a laser-scanning microscope, the intricate latticework of nerve fibers in a mouse retina pop with color in this picture by Gabriel Luna of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
(See pictures of microscopic sea creatures.)
Published October 6, 2011
8th Place: Colorful Granulite
Image courtesy Bernardo Cesare, University of Padova/Nikon Small World
Bold strokes of color enliven a picture of graphite-bearing granulite, a metamorphic rock consisting mainly of feldspar and quartz. Bernardo Cesare of Padova, Italy, magnified the rock—collected in Kerala, India—2.5 times and earned eighth place in the Small World photo competition.
Published October 6, 2011
9th Place: Marine Copepod
Image courtesy Jan Michels, University of Kiel/Nikon Small World
Not to fear—this evil-looking marine copepod is a tiny crustacean and among the most common types of multicelled creatures in the oceans.
Jan Michels, of the University of Kiel in Germany, snapped this belly-up view at ten-times magnification. (See more award-winning pictures of microscopic life.)
Published October 6, 2011
10th Place: Water Flea
Image courtesy Joan Röhl, Institute for Biochemistry and Biology/Nikon Small World
Magnified a hundred times, the inner workings of a freshwater flea emerge in a picture by Joan Röhl of the Institute for Biochemistry and Biology in Potsdam, Germany.
Reaching lengths of roughly 5 millimeters (0.2 inch), Daphnia magna—found in brackish waters of lakes and small rock pools—is relatively large in water flea terms.
(See an alien-like water flea-among the winning pictures of a 2009 microscopic-life photo contest.)
Published October 6, 2011