Everyday things look quite different under a microscope - including the leaf of a southern live oak tree, pictured above.
Jason Kirk, director of a microscope-imaging facility at Baylor College of Medicine, likes to tinker with microscopes and use them to photograph things from his backyard. To create the above image, he illuminated a leaf's small-scale structures with a customized microscope. Kirk captured about 200 images then stacked them on top of each other to create this vibrant portrait.
The result shows the leaf's trichomes - little outgrowths that protect the plant - in white. Pores that help the plant regulate gas flows, called stomata, appear in purple. Vessels that carry water through the leaf pop out in blue-green.
That technical handiwork led Kirk to win first place in this year's Nikon Small World competition, a contest the camera company launched in 1974 to recognize achievements in microscope photography, also known as microscopy.
"Nikon Small World was created to show the world how art and science come together under the microscope. This year's first-place winner could not be a better example of that blend," Eric Flem, a communications manager at Nikon Instruments, said in a press release.
For the 2021 competition, Nikon received nearly 1,900 entries from 88 countries. A panel of judges selected 20 winners and recognized 80 other images for distinction or honorable mention. Some of the photos, like Kirk's, show familiar things in a totally new light. Others reveal organisms all around us that we never see.
Here are 16 other striking photos from the competition.