GDT Naturfotograf 2014 – “Die besten Naturfotografien des Jahres”. Radomir Jakubowski – Spieglein Spieglein. 2nd place: Mammals. (Photo by Radomir Jakubowski)

A worker unloads fish from a taxi boot at a fish market in Kolkata, India on February 5, 2018. (Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

Workers clean empty cooking oil containers at a roadside recycling workshop in Kolkata, India, July 13, 2016. (Photo by Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

A housewife whose family lives in a shanty cooks beside a road in Manila, Philippines May 25, 2016. (Photo by Erik De Castro/Reuters)

Children play football in Bujumbura, Burundi on March 19, 2015. (Photo by Carl de Souza/AFP Photo)

A woman refreshes at a fountain in Casa de Campo during a heatwave in Madrid, Spain on June 15, 2022. (Photo by Isabel Infantes/Reuters)

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.

“They're some of the most intriguing and complex creatures on the planet but they really do have nothing to hide – because theyre totally see-through. Transparent animals – creatures with clear glass-like skin – can be found all over the world but their very existence is still shrouded in mystery. The fascinating organisms verge on the invisible and their translucent skin often helps them elude predators”. – Caters News. Photo: Thornback Skate. (Photo by Ken Lucas/Caters News)