The terrifying close-up of an ant’s face has won one of the awards at Nikon’s annual photography competition, the Nikon Small World 2022. The image, captured through a microscope, reflects what the face of this insect looks like, which It has nothing to do with what we can see with the naked eye in real size.
Some antennae that come out of what look like monstrous red eyes and razor-sharp teeth that give the image a most terrifying look.
The winner of the award was the Lithuanian Eugenijus Kavaliauskas, an outstanding raptor photographer who, as he explained to ‘Insider’, captured the image using a optical microscope with light technique reflected and a lens magnification X5.
Image from a horror movie? Nope. That’s the very real face of an ant.
An ant.
Now you have to think about that all night. pic.twitter.com/HOWLTlnfJ1— Rebekah McKendry, PhD (@RebekahMcKendry) October 17, 2022
His image of the ant is one of 57 “images of distinction” selected from 1,300 submitted by professionals from 72 different countries.
Kavaliauskas explained that he lives near a forest, so he had at hand to take a photo of an ant, “but it’s boring to take a photo of an ant running banally on the ground.” The idea that he wanted to convey is that of «creation»: «I am always looking for details, shadows and corners not yet discovered. The main purpose of photography is to be a discoverer,” he noted.
This is not the first time he has used this technique. “When I started microphotography, I too thought that all beetles looked a bit like monsters,” he admits. Now, instead, he is able to see “interesting, beautiful and unknown miracles under our feet.”
Despite going viral, it has not been the winner of the highest prize, which has been awarded to researchers from the Department of Genetics and Evolution of the University of Geneva Grigorii Timin and Michel Milinkovitch. The winning image depicts a front leg of a Madagascar giant day gecko in bright, fluorescent detail.
The final result, highlights the contest website, allows you to see the hidden beauty and complexity of the gecko, highlighting the nerves in a cyan color and the bones, tendons, ligaments, skin and blood cells in a range of warmer colors.