Gary Greenberg takes extreme close-ups of grains of sand:
“It is incredible to think when you are walking on the beach you are standing on these tiny treasures,” said Professor Greenberg, who has a PhD in biomedical research from University College London. He views these extraordinary particles at a magnification of over 250 times, exposing their real shapes – fragments of crystals, tips of spiral shells, bits of coral, or crumbs of volcanic rock. … He spends hours looking at thousands of tiny rocks through a high-powered light microscope. He sifts through them with acupuncture needles to find and arrange the most perfect specimens. Then he uses a painstaking technique to create his images.
“Extreme close up photography normally gives a very shallow depth of field so I had to develop a new process to make the pictures I wanted,” he said. “I take dozens of pictures at different points of focus then combine them using software to produce my images. Although the pictures look simple each grain of sand can take hours to photograph in a way that I am happy with.”
(Photo by Gary Greenberg. Previous Dish on sand here.)
The Dish 