A boy reacts as dogs play along the riverbank of Pasig river, in Manila, Philippines, June 10, 2021. (Photo by Lisa Marie David/Reuters)

A participant has his body painted before a regional bodybuilding championship in Stavropol, southern Russia, April 10, 2016. (Photo by Eduard Korniyenko/Reuters)

Two cocks are trained for a fight in a village in Nakhon Sawan province, Thailand January 10, 2017. (Photo by Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters)

A woman plays with her three dogs at the beach after sunset in Del Mar, California, USA on November 10, 2017. (Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters)

A tourist train is decorated with Christmas lights in Bogotá, Colombia on December 10, 2017. (Photo by Jaime Saldarriaga/Reuters)

A model poses for a portrait backstage during Dakar Fashion Week July 10, 2011. (Photo by Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters)

A vendor holds a fried spider along a street in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, April 10, 2017. (Photo by Samrang Pring/Reuters)

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)