Microworlds

Wave splashes - catching the right moment

2012-02-25T01:28:00.000-08:00

Everyone loves waves! They catch attention really fast as they form all those fascinating shapes, their power and beauty is mesmerizing. Big waves are cool, but in the Philippines where I took the pictures waves are normally tiny and I spent some times trying to take macro shots of waves colliding with rocks and those amazing splashes with sunset in the background.

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PETAR national park and caves in Brazil

2012-01-23T21:08:00.000-08:00

PETAR national park is situated close to Sao Paulo in Brazil, I happened to visit it as I participated in an astrobiology school in December 2011. I might not be able to impress anyone with photography skills, but I really want to share this 3 day long experience of visiting such a fantastic place in Brazilian mountains full of waterfalls and caves.

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Microscopic worlds - the movie, and how it was created

2011-11-12T07:20:00.001-08:00

Microscopic Worlds - Life that we don't see, watch the video in HD full screen, follow the link to vimeo to do it.

We are surrounded with various living creatures, but how often do we notice the tiniest ones and how small can they be? Such common but inconspicuous organisms like water fleas, seed shrimps, and hydras are less than a centimeter (0.4 inches) in size but they are very important components of the freshwater ecosystems. The vast majority of organisms are even smaller and they are completely invisible with naked eyes. Using sophisticated optic systems I am bringing even the smallest animals before your eyes; they can be magnificent and scary, fast-moving or hiding; most of them look nothing like animals we see every day…

If you are looking for a version with subtitles, follow the link to Youtube, just notice that YouTube has slightly worse quality. However, YouTube might be a better option if you would like to embed the video.

I am bringing my sincere apologies for the narration audio quality, but there’s nothing I can do to improve it at this point. It also is a bit too fast and some scenes change before you can focus on them; considering that it's my first video ever, please don't be too harsh when judging it.

What this post is about

Overall I am not surprised that no one tried to produce a movie recorded through a microscope, it’s an insanely difficult task due to technical limitations.

In this post I’ll describe what was behind the scenes, how I made this movie possible and what difficulties I encountered.

My new website

2011-11-04T01:49:00.000-07:00

I started selling prints and digital images and you can visit microworldsphotography.com. I will be updating and maintaining the site but my blog will not get abandoned.

I am also about to release the video I was working on, still need to finish the audio editing, which appeared to be the longest part for me.

Cyclop - freshwater copepod

2011-09-26T13:45:00.000-07:00

Copepods are a large group of microscopic crustaceans, unlike water fleas I seldom take pictures of them because they are very fast and stop moving only for few moments making stacking process almost impossible. Copepods are very common in ocean plankton and you can see some really cool representatives on this wikipedia picture. They are also abundant in freshwater habitats and cyclopoida is the most famous order of them as it includes the Cyclop genus.

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Hydra - a monstrous freshwater predator

2011-09-17T04:28:00.000-07:00

Hydras are perhaps the most well known microscopic freshwater animals, they are one of the most simple multicellular animals that are slightly more complex that sponges. Yet they display a behavior that seems complex, they move a lot, spread their tentacles trying to catch water fleas and are very gorgeous looking cnidarians.
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Mosquito larva in polarized light

2011-09-10T14:39:00.000-07:00

Mosquitoes are annoying, that's obvious for everyone, however what's not obvious is the fact that identifying mosquitoes is the worst nightmare ever! Their larvae are also pain in the butt... at least that's what I thought till I saw them in polarized light!
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Mayfly nymph - high resolution photos

2011-09-04T13:41:00.000-07:00

Mayflies are relatives of dragonflies and damselflies, and they also have aquatic larvae that predates on small invertebrates or eat something more vegetarian, like algae. Like in many insects, their nymphs (larva is not a technically correct term for them) are the main stage of the life cycle taking up to a year to develop into an adult and adults won't live longer than a day. The nymphs are small (less than a centimeter) and without proper optics it's impossible to see how beautiful they are.
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Shells of microscopic crustaceans

2011-08-28T03:24:00.000-07:00

Arthropods always look cool because of their external shells that enclose their bodies, microscopic arthropods are not an exception, and to my surprise they have very peculiar surface. The first pictures shows an ostracod, a tiny crustacean that is completely surrounded with a shell, resembling a bivalve mollusc. They are normally very fast and it's totally impossible to see how they look like inside without destroying their armor which I wouldn't do.
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Magnificent eyes of water fleas

2011-08-19T06:54:00.000-07:00

All arthropods have very impressive eyes, some of them are simple, some of them are exceptionally complex which consist of lots of individual photoreceptor units. Insects and crustaceans often have both which gives them such an alien look.
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Water fleas and polarized light

2011-08-08T14:51:00.000-07:00

Polyphemus pediculus, darkfiled illumination, 20x lens, water film on the object making it look wet

Since most of microscopic creatures are transparent various sophisticated systems are integrated into modern microscopes to make things visible. Recently I tried different polarization techniques and got some very spectacular pictures.
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Viable Ancient Choanoflagellates from Siberian Permafrost

2011-07-22T04:55:00.000-07:00

Choanoflagellates are the closest unicellular relatives of the animals (Metazoa).

They seem like very simple organisms, they have a flagellum, a collar like sponge choanocytes which they use to capture bacteria and some species have other external structures like basket-looking loricas and thecas.

Read more about choanoflagellates here and here.

They are very common in freshwater and marine environments and they look very gentle and fragile. Yet they managed to survive for around 28-50 thousand years in one of the most extreme environments on Earth. Part of my research was about studying these amazing protists that we found in Siberian permafrost.
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Colorful plant seed fluorescence

2011-07-21T13:34:00.000-07:00

Plant parts can be glowing with all colours under UV light, if you know which dye combo to apply. In this case I used 8 dyes, and through this post it will be visible how the coloration is changing in time and with addition of other dyes.
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Large invertebrates fluorescence

2011-07-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

Large animals are hard to observe through a microscope, however when it's possible they can be interesting-looking. This huge larva could be covered with almost 100 pictures (4 z-stack combined like a panorama), it's glowing with green color, wish it was possible to see something inside.
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Aliens in the microscope

2011-07-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's so funny that we associate normal and common animals with aliens, I guess movie designers don't even have to invent creatures, it's more than enough to look around, especially through the microscope to see something very unusual.
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Rotifer with animation

2011-07-14T02:23:00.000-07:00

Finally a successful rotifer match animation. Pictures taken under x100 lens DIC and epifluorescence.
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Fluorescent Water Fleas

2011-07-11T13:02:00.000-07:00

Water fleas are very fun to watch at, they are diverse, abundant and cute. They also swim very fast with jerky movements and when dyed with fluorescent dyes they become exceptionally amazing.
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California

2011-07-05T12:13:00.000-07:00

I came back from San Francisco some weeks ago and now I am sorting out pictures that I've made. And yes, the blog is not only about microscopy.
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More fluorescent rotifers - animations

2011-07-04T12:52:00.000-07:00

Rotifers are very spectacular and interesting to look at through the microscope, however making fluorescent/light microscopy match animations is almost impossible. Even if the animals don't move, there's always something moving inside or just tiny body movements, if you take 2 pictures with 1 second interval, it's already enough not to match the pictures.

Traffic warning! Animations are roughly 2 mb + pictures, slow connection might cause failure to load the page. Reload the page if pictures do not load. Also notice that Internet Explorer might be very slow here, use another browser if it happens.

Rotifers through the light microscope (DIC)

2011-07-03T14:51:00.000-07:00

I seldom show any "regular" microscopy pictures but for rotifers I can make an exception. The creature on top is a stack of 20 pics and in my next post I'll show fluorescence of these rotifers.

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Cyclops

2011-07-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I managed to take some shots of cyclops, they are very hard to catch with a pipette and even harder to take pictures of as they don't stop for more than two seconds. Still easier to photograph than other water fleas.

To make stack on top I made 150 shots most of which were blurred...
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Glowing Rotifers

2011-06-30T15:01:00.000-07:00

Rotifers are very abundant and diverse in freshwater, however they are so small and hard to take pictures of that it takes a lot to get some collection of photos, especially fluorescent ones. Used my new camera to make most of the pictures.
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Plant seed - dye combo

2011-06-04T11:36:00.000-07:00

Fluorescence in these pictures is due to a combination of various dyes. The coloration was constantly changing, so I've got at least 3 different pictures.
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Huge hydra fluorescence

2011-06-03T10:13:00.000-07:00

Usually hydras contract the moment they are exposed to fluorescent dyes or UV light, that one was huge and it definitely did not care about either.

Made about 200 shots observing how the coloration was changing during two hours. I used to hate these bastards as they were killing water fleas I was hunting for. Leaving them in the same space would make all my efforts pointless but when I decided to color them out of rage I realized how beautiful they can be.
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Daphnia - green fluorescence

2011-05-31T12:52:00.000-07:00

A shot of another water flea - daphnia. This one is huge compared to the previous, and the pictures were taken under 10x. Only 5 pictures stacked as I was unable to get field of depth because the object started glowing with different colors and was not bright enough anymore.

Canon PowerShot G10
10x, Axiostar

How fluorescence transforms what you see in the microscope

2011-05-23T01:51:00.000-07:00

Stack of 20 pictures showing a rotifer in a shell. Hybrid image of fluorescence and phase contrast.

In this traffic heavy post I'm describing how fluorescence is used in microscopy and showing with transition animations how what you see in a "regular" light microscope matches with fluorescent pictures.

Notice that it can take some time for animations to start as they take time to load. Animations require flash, no apple mobile devices support. Also viewing this page might be very slow and glitchy with Internet Explorer, try other browsers if it happens.

Sunset Chitons

2011-05-21T01:02:00.000-07:00

Made this series of shots in Tobago. Nearly killed my camera as I had to take pictures in the surf on slippery rocks. I had roughly 2 seconds between waves to approach the chitons sitting right next to the water, take a macro shot and cover my camera from a wave and then run away as there was normally a bigger wave coming.
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Water Flea

2011-05-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

The full resolution of the image is 7500x5500, here only small version appears. Click on the pic to enlarge to 1280x960.

This is a stack of about 30 pictures that I made under 40x lens. The head was shot at 10 different focus planes to get a filed of depth stack and the rest was combined like a panorama.

So far the most complex image that I made
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Oligochaeta worm fluorescence

2011-05-18T23:53:00.000-07:00

An oligochaeta worm. Acridine orange, Canon PowerShot G10, Magnification roughly 100x, Lens - 10x

Recently I've been looking at everything under UV light and colouring with random dyes. Fluorescence is awesome! Soon I'll be posting lots of pictures and animations, found out that it's more fun to look at bigger stuff than tiny ciliates.

I only need to figure where to host SWF animations without adds and in relatively unlimited amounts.

Fluorescent ciliates - animations

2011-05-17T03:09:00.000-07:00

3 different colpoda ciliates with acridine orange combined into a single image. The left one is dead... because of the dye. The middle one was dead before coloring and the one on the right is alive. The size of ciliates is roughly 15 microns

I made a whole bunch of animations showing phase contrast and fluorescent pictures of Colpoda cilates, but in this post showing only two so far.
I decided to embed animations inside posts, so whoever has ipads or other devices that are too sophisticated to show SWF animations won't have problems loading the blog front page.
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Reefs and coral diseases

2011-05-15T11:09:00.000-07:00

When I joined a marine conservation programme I was dreaming of beautiful underwater worlds, I was thinking about taking some colorful pictures and getting indelible impressions, and little did I know about all those reef issues like coral bleaching, pollution.
Underwater surveying in random sites around Tobago and going to places that normal divers would avoid didn't take long to make me realize that reefs are not what they used to be in Cousteau TV series...
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Non fluorescent pictures of protists

2011-05-09T02:07:00.000-07:00

Object's size roughly 14 microns

For my work I used to do a lot of phase contrast pictures through the microscope. This is small collection of pictures that I made during my bachelor's with ancient protists. I call them ancient because these guys spent thousands of years (some of those up to 35 th.y.) in frozen state in Siberian permafrost... [added: I wrote a post about them]

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Caribbean sponges - Tobago

2011-05-07T12:26:00.000-07:00

Tobago has an interesting underwater world, and what attracted me more were sponges, they have weird ambiguous classification (the one that we were given at the expedition) but they are colorful and more abundant than anything else, guess mostly because corals are in a terrible condition.
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Ciliate cyst

2011-05-06T03:45:00.000-07:00

Hope you don't have problems seeing the animation, it can take some time to load.

That's an animation showing combination of fluorescence of acridine orange in a ciliate cyst and phase contrast image.
The two pictures were taken with Canon PowerShot G10, x100 lens

I hope that soon I will write a tutorial how to make animations like that because I think pictures are not sufficient to show what you see in a microscope

Press See moree link to see the hybrid picture in case you don't see that animation or just want to see a static image

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Tobago marine expedition

2011-05-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

From September 2010 till February 2011 I joined a Coral Cay Conservation marine expedition on Tobago, which is a tiny island in the Caribbean sea. I was a marine biology volunteer and I'll try to describe this amazing experience that involved diving, underwater surveying and living on a remote part of a tropical island...

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Acridine stars

2011-05-04T01:00:00.000-07:00

I think that's my favorite dye as it colors in green and in red, depending on the acidity, what you see in the microscope sometimes resembles stars shining with all colors!

A ciliate where organelles are visible

Canon PowerShot G10
x60 Lens, x100 for the second shot; 1/4 sec.

White Sea Biological Station

2011-05-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

White Sea biological station is a fantastic place that is part of Moscow State University and is located beyond the polar circle on the coast of the White Sea (North of Russia). It's a scientific village in the middle of the forest and has no road connections, nearest cities are far far away from it and all biology students during their study have to come here to have practice in marine biology and botany. I never even imagined that northern landscapes are so amazing and breathtaking with lichens growing instead of grass, absence of nights, endless sunsets/sunrises and mosquitoes replacing the air...
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First post!

2011-05-01T04:30:00.000-07:00

I started this blog to share pictures that I do for my job and travel stories.
During the first month I'll be posting mostly the same content I sort of have on my facebook account.

Pictures I posted today were taken with Canon Powershot G10 under fluorescent microscope...
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