2015 Nikon microscopy contest winners: Science is art

Each year, a number of photography competitions touch on science. My favorite one of the lot is always Nikon's Small World Photomicrography Contest. The results of this year's contest were released earlier this week, and once again they are truly spectacular.

There's no one reason that I find these images compelling—instead, there is a large collection of reasons. One of them is that the images force you to see things you thought were familiar (and perhaps even boring) in an entirely new way. Take these images of plants, for example.

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Depending on the sample and preparation, the images evoke works of art, horror movie props, or alien beings. In short, they look like anything but plants, even after you know that's what you're staring at.