A Gallery of Beautiful Tiny Things

Since 1974, Nikon has sponsored a yearly photo competition for images that delve into the worlds beyond the reach of the unaided human eye. The camera maker feted the photographers who made the top 20 "photomicrographs" in Nikon's annual Small World competition at New York's Explorer's Club. The winners were drawn from a pool of 1,709 submissions. The $3,000 first prize in Nikon's 2007 Small World competition goes to Gloria Kwon of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York. Kwon's composite image of a mouse embryo, captured in both visible and ultraviolet light, reveals the inherent biochemical differences between the embryo (fluorescent red) and its yolk sac (highlighter green).