Small World Speaks

I've been a fan of the Nikon Small World competition for a very long time, and when they first reached out to be a judge, I was sitting right here. I jumped up and I was like, no way, no way! I guess for me, this is like the Oscars of microscopy, and microscopy is the core of science.

Each judge comes from a different background. You have people with more of a photography background coming from the news world, people with deep microscopy knowledge who do techniques I've never even seen the microscope do before. And then, someone like me, who's done a bunch of microscopy, not so advanced, and thinks about the story side of things.

We looked through them with the first pass and voted on them, and then the top ones from all of us get pulled together, and we sit and deliberate and choose our top. Then another shorter list, and so, you go through these multiple rounds from multiple people, and then you convene in person and discuss and discuss.

We all had different favorites. We all had different things about each image that we liked. And we got to have genuine debate, which is the fun part of science. And, picking one that balanced excellent technique, but also beautiful artistry and could tell a compelling story to pull people in. That was the balance that we had.

It was really, really fun to learn from different perspectives. And the volume of submissions, I think, tells us both how impactful Nikon Small World is and how much interest there is in telling science stories through this, technical and artistic, form of microscopy.