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)

Third place: the rear leg, claw and respiratory trachea of a louse (Haematopinus suis). (Photo by Frank Reiser/Nassau Community College/Nikon Small World Photomicrography 2021)

In this photograph taken on August 20, 2022 a woman dances with a child alongside the Garonne river in Toulouse, southern France. (Photo by Charly Triballeau/AFP Photo)

Photographer Henry Hargreaves and artist Caitlin Levin have been working together for about decade. Their shared love for “food, photography, travel, and art” has found an outlet in a series of maps that they have illustrated with food.

Fluffy toy panda bears as part of the art installation “Panda mie” by Italian restaurant owner Giuseppe “Pino” Fichera sit over beers at his restaurant “Pino's” to raise awareness of the COVID-19 lockdown's business impact on gastronomy in Frankfurt, Germany, November 24, 2020. (Photo by Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)

Papier-mache sculptures, also known as “ninots”, burn during the “Nit de la Crema” (Fire Night) of the Fallas Festival in Valencia, eastern Spain, 19 March 2024. Fallas is a fortnight-long fiesta in which installations of parodic papier-mache, cardboard, and wooden sculptures are traditionally burnt every year on the last day of the event in the so-called “Crema” to end the festivities. (Photo by Biel Alino/EPA/EFE)

A illegal gold miner of Kamoro people, Tinus, pan for gold on February 4, 2017 in Timika, Papua Province, Indonesia. Indonesia produces over 70 billion dollars in gold a year and is home to the largest gold mine and the third largest copper mine in the world, the Grasberg mine, which is located at West Papua. (Photo by Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images)

A girl sits on her boat at a Bak Angrout dried up pond at the drought-hit Kandal province in Cambodia May 13, 2016. (Photo by Samrang Pring/Reuters)