The Lennart Nilsson Award for scientific photography

            

         

Four photographs by Satoshi Kuribayashi, the winner of this year’s Lennart Nilsson Award for scientific photography.

From the press release:

Mr Kuribayashi was selected as this year’s prize-winner because of the photographic techniques he pioneered to photograph the world of the insect [with] new and unique method[s]…based largely on his skills in designing and fabricating optical devices and other photographic equipment required to both examine and capture imagery at the magnification required to accomplish this work. One of his innovations includes a medical instrument to which he has fitted a lens of only three millimetres in diameter. Using humour, empathy, beauty and unsurpassed precision he depicts both the insects themselves and their environments in fascinating video and still imagery. His images provide a new perspective on one of the Earth’s many ecosystems where human beings and insects prove to have unexpectedly much in common.