Do tears of joy look the same as ones of woe—or ones from chopping onions? In “The Topography of Tears,” the Los Angeles-based photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher explores the physical terrain of one hundred tears emitted during a range of emotional states and physical reactions. Using a Zeiss microscope with an attached digital camera, she captures the composition of tears enclosed in glass slides, magnified between 10x and 40x. “There are many factors that determine the look of each tear image, including the viscosity of the tear, the chemistry of the weeper, the settings of the microscope, and the way I process the images afterwards,” she says.

#Petheadz – is an Instagram series by Zach Rose, a 23 year old photographer/filmmaker from Toronto. (Photo by Zach Rose)

The International Trophy float on the parade route during the 123rd Rose Parade presented by Honda on January 2, 2012 in Pasadena, California. (Photo by Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)

A woman carries a floral design handbag at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London, Britain on May 21, 2018. The annual show of floral art, timed to coincide with the RHS Chelsea Flower Show nearby, sees over sixty shops, restaurants and local businesses compete for prizes, with the awards given by RHS (Royal Horticultural Society) judges, this year on the theme of “Summer of Love”. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)

Women pose for a selfie in a lavender field at Hitchin Lavender farm in Ickleford, Britain, August 4, 2020. (Photo by Peter Cziborra/Reuters)

Georgia Baker, 12, enjoys the bright yellow Sunflower field on a farm near Christchurch in Dorset on August 7, 2022. (Photo by Rachel Baker/Bournemouth News)

The Plants like flower grow up in the wild. Spring 2014 near Paveh, Kermanshah, Iran

Abdulahi Yaroow, 13, smokes a cigarette while chewing khat at the same time in Mogadishu August 10, 2014. Grown on plantations in the highlands of Kenya and Ethiopia, tonnes of khat, or qat, dubbed “the flower of paradise” by its users, are flown daily into Mogadishu airport, to be distributed from there in convoys of lorries to markets across Somalia. Britain, whose large ethnic Somali community sustained a lucrative demand for the leaves, banned khat from July as an illegal drug. This prohibition jolted the khat market, creating a supply glut in Somalia and pushing down prices, to the delight of the many connoisseurs of its amphetamine-like high. (Photo by Thomas Mukoya/Reuters)