Nikon Small World

The incredible winners from this year's Nikon Small World photo awards strike a unique balance between art and science, offering everything from a surreal close-up of the grooves in an old vinyl record to a stunning image of hippocampal neurons firing.

Zooming in on the motion of the microscopic, the winners of the Nikon Small World video contest offer up the closest one can get to shrinking down to the size of Ant-Man and experiencing the weird and wonderful world of polyps, proteins and parasites.

Nikon’s Small World competition has been running for nearly 50 years and it is one of the most compelling and reliably spectacular photo contests in the world. This year's contest featured many mesmerizing images like this small white hair spider by Javier Rupérez.

A surreal close-up of a weevil eye has taken the top prize at this year’s Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition. The magnificent annual photography competition, now in its 44th year, celebrates the skill and artistry in the world of microscopic photography.

The Nikon Small World in Motion competition is more than just a microscopic video competition. This glimpse into the world in miniature showcases a variety of hypnotically strange sights from a laser bouncing around a psychedelic soap membrane to trippy fractal footage of soy sauce evaporating.

​Every year science and art collide in the Nikon Small World in Motion Photomicrography Competition. This year's top three winners include hypnotic water patterns made by an eight-week-old starfish larva, a predatory ciliate stretching its rubbery neck to gobble up prey, and a blooming fungus.