So many of the images that are captivating me have been taken at between 50 and 100 times magnification.
This makes me think about how close human perception is to the ability to gain access to a vastly expanded understanding of our world, and yet we seem to have been made to live in a different scale of existence, one that maybe makes us the ideal scale for shaping the world around us with physics, but I am prompted by these images to wonder how much more sympathetic with our environment we might have been, had we ability to see even a little way into the micro scale.
As a former photographer and in advertising, but as a child you wouldn't have bet against me pursuing a career in the sciences and particularly biology and botany, I must particularly rue the relatively poor availability of photographic tools for micro photography. Macro and micro lenses almost disappeared from catalogues about the time when autofocus was introduced. Minolta sold the only 1-3 times magnification autofocus lens and I've never seen one. Only last month, Sony started selling the adapter that can enable Sony Alpha cameras to attach and correctly use old A mount lenses.
It's not quickly easy to find information about photomicography, but in case it's missed the Small World website links to this very good resource: