certainly appearing to be a pile of gemstones, this is actually a extreme closeup shot of a flower anther. within the middle of a gladiolus flower, you'll find four long and narrow stems protruding from the center of each bloom. three of these have a tiny banana-shaped pod (anther) on the end, and the remaining one (stigma) has three tiny fingers on the end. if you zoom into the anther, it appears something like a long canoe-like boat heaping full of cargo. zooming in more (and from the side), you can get a clear view of the 'cargo' of cells stacked up in the anther/boat. this photo is a tiny portion of that cargo and each 'gem' is about half the area of a human hair. (check out our "Sea Monster" shot to see the neighboring stigma up close.)

This dusty miller plant would look right at home as an underwater sea plant on a coral reef, but is actually a nice terrain-based plant with velvety-soft leaves.

sunset above the clouds near the hawaiian islands

this is a super closeup shot of computer CPU (or 0.01% of the whole CPU). this particular area shows a mish-mash of wires criss-crossing and refracting light into a rainbow of colours. the micro-wires are so tiny that over 48,000 of them can lay side-by-side within an inch and have plenty of room for insulation in between (as best as we can measure - it is really small stuff in there).

huge canopy over Japanese garden creating a perfect balance of shade and sun for comfort.

This is truly in the middle of nowhere and reachable only by foot (or perhaps parachute). It's hard to believe that rock could form in such fluid shapes but it sure makes for a great find for those willing to bare the elements of the desert.

northern Indiana woods

just as you are wondering how we captured such a fantastic shot of a distant mountain at the same time as a network of caverns below it, the truth behind this photo is even more fantastic. this is really a closeup shot of a rose thorn broken off it's stem. the lower 2/3 of the photo is the inside part of the thorn where it used to be attached. the 'landscape' at top is the outer surface of the thorn that happened to have a bump shaped like a mountain (measuring 0.014 inches wide which is about the thickness of a playing card). to hold it steady during photography, we have the sharp point stuck into a piece of blue plastic which created our sky and blue reflections on the distant 'mountains'. the underground 'diamonds' are white crystal-looking cells that reflected our lighting like little mirrors.