“Microscope images forge an extraordinary bond between science and art, said Hidenao Tsuchiya, Olympus America's Vice President and General Manager for the Scientific Equipment Group. We founded this competition to focus on the fascinating stories coming out of today's life science research laboratories. The thousands of images that people have shared with the competition over the years reflect some of the most exciting work going on in research today – work that can help shed light on the living universe and ultimately save lives. We look at BioScapes and these beautiful images as sources of education and inspiration to us and the world”. – OlympusBioScapes

Photo: Pretarsus of the third leg of a female drone fly (Eristalis tenax), ventral view, by Dr. Jan Michels, Institute of Zoology, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Germany. (Photo by Olympus BioScapes)

“A Hadaka Matsuri (“Naked Festival”) is a type of Japanese festival, or matsuri, in which participants wear a minimum amount of clothing; usually just a Japanese loincloth (called fundoshi), sometimes with a short happi coat, and rarely completely naked. Whatever the clothing, it is considered to be above vulgar, or everyday, undergarments, and on the level of holy Japanese shrine attire. Naked festivals are held in dozens of places throughout Japan every year, usually in the summer or winter. The most famous festival is held in Okayama, where the festival originated. Every year, over 9,000 men participate in this festival”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Japanese men wear loincloths as they splash about in freezing cold water during Saidaiji Naked Festival, at Saidaiji Temple on February 18, 2012 in Okayama, Japan. (Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images)

We – Verena Popp-Hackner and Georg Popp - are professional landscape photographers. While we are based in Vienna/Austria, running our own (rights managed) image library and a small but fine photo-gallery. Photographing our tiny country Austria, with all it's culture and nature, canoeing it's rivers or lakes and hiking the Alps is our profession but our photographic “backyard” includes the rest of the planet as well. We use analog large format cameras almost exclusively for our landscape work, shooting on 4x5” sheet film, to provide clients with the maximum of print-sharpness and details and unsurpassed clarity and depth of focus.

Graduates jump as they pose for photographs in front of the Tiananmen Gate and the giant portrait of late Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong, on the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, June 19, 2014. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

Refugee children play with a stuffed toy at a muddy makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border, near the village of Idomeni, Greece March 15, 2016. (Photo by Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters)

American model and media personality Kendall Jenner attends the Gucci women's Spring Summer 2024 collection presented in Milan, Italy, Friday, September 22, 2023. (Photo by Luca Bruno/AP Photo)

People pass by a light decoration during Valentine’s Day in Tirana, Albania, on February 14, 2024. (Photo by Florion Goga/Reuters)

A shoe and a plastic halloween pumpkin are pictured at the scene where a stampede during Halloween festivities killed and injured many people at the popular Itaewon district in Seoul, South Korea on October 30, 2022. (Photo by Yonhap via Reuters)