Small World Speaks

It was great. We had a really good mix of people of different backgrounds in generating scientific images and evaluating them. I was worried that it would be all fluorescence microscopists, and we wouldn't have any idea what to do with some of the bug and crystal pictures.

We had a really good breadth of knowledge. And if anything, that led to a much more rounded-out final selection. I think, just naturally, I was drawn to unusual images, things that I hadn't seen a thousand times.

I think by nature, I'm just going to be more harsh on the fluorescence microscopy images, just because I'm much more familiar with them and familiar with how difficult or how easy it can be. But ultimately, we're trying to judge them based on how beautiful they were, their aesthetic qualities.

One of the first things I would look at when judging the image is the presentation. If it was a very attractive sample, but something is sort of off-center or cut off a little bit, that diminishes the quality of the image, it would immediately drop the image down from a little bit lower, even if it had nice sample prep or if it was a complicated sample to image.

There was an image from Dylan Burnette that ended up coming in 10th that I just loved. I look at that picture all the time, and it's really aesthetically pleasing to me.

The selection of winners we ended up choosing really does reflect a thoughtful consensus among all the judges.