Most people know Nikon as a purveyor of pro and consumer-grade digital cameras. But the company's expertise with optics bleeds over into related markets – it's one of the science community's major suppliers of microscopes. And each year the company asks the community to send it some of their favorite images of tiny objects. A panel of scientists and journalists have chosen the best of this past year's submissions, which Nikon has placed on its Small World site.

Photo: Honorable Mention. “Snow crystal, illuminated with colored lights (5x)”. (Photo by Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Department of Physics, Pasadena, California, USA)

Kim Leuenberger is a Swiss photographer with a love for travel. She believes we are all explorers and is currently studying photography at University of the Arts London. These photos are from her series, “Traveling Cars Adventures”. Photo: “Lover of the Light”, Red Union Jack Mini Cooper, Bern, Switzerland, October 2012. (Photo by Kim Leuenberger)

A man looks at waves as they crash against a lighthouse in the northern Spanish village of Viavelez, Spain January 13, 2017. (Photo by Eloy Alonso/Reuters)

Khan, a five-year-old male White Bengal tiger, looks on inside an open-air cage at the Royev Ruchey zoo in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, October 21, 2016. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

A motorcycle sits at the site of a destroyed home after the Soberanes Fire burned through the Palo Colorado area, north of Big Sur, California, July 31, 2016. (Photo by Michael Fiala/Reuters)

A woman rides a horse through the biannual Stow Horse Fair in the town of Stow-on-the-Wold, southern England on October 24, 2019. The Stow Horse Fair has attracted Gypsy and Traveller people from all over the country to the Cotswold town every May and October since 1476. (Photo by Oli Scarff/AFP Photo)

A fire engine drives away from flames on the ridge, east of Silverwood Lake in Crestline, Calif., Sunday, August 7, 2016. (Photo by Terry Peirson/The Press-Enterprise via AP Photo)

These romantic sepia shots show lovers enjoying quiet, unguarded moments together – but the subjects are not besotted couples; they are fearsome big cats. Freelance snapper Goran Anastasovski has devoted more than 10 years of his life to photographing big cats and other animals. The 46-year-old from Macedonia aims to emphasize their human qualities in his photographs. (Photo by Goran Anastasovski/Caters News)