Ray Collins is a colorblind Australian coal miner who is in love with the ocean. He spends his off days photographing it. Collins says he enjoys capturing the moment before the moment, the anticipation, not knowing how the end of the wave's journey will play out. (Photo by Ray Collins)

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.

Waves breaking at Killiney Beach, Co Dublin, Ireland on Sunday, October 20, 2024. (Photo by Stephen Collins/Collins Photos)

Avigail Collins and Daisy Lowe attend Liudmila X Avigail Collins Launch Party on July 13, 2017 in London, England. (Photo by Kintzing.com for Liudmila x Avigail Collins/SilverHub/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

At the Los Angeles premiere of her film “MaXXXine” on June 24, 2024, British-American actress Lily Collins comes face to face with herself. (Photo by Lily Collins/Instagram)

British-American actress and model Lily Collins replicates Cher Horowitz's “Clueless” moment in the first decade of May 2022. (Photo by lilyjcollins/Instagram)

British-American actress and model Lily Collins (R) celebrates wrapping up the latest season of “Emily in Paris” in the last decade of September 2022. (Photo by lilyjcollins/Instagram)