The shelled sea butterfly Hyalocylis striata can be found in the warm surface waters of the ocean around the world. Photo: © Karen Osborn

The chemistry of the ocean is changing. Most climate change discussion focuses on the warmth of the air, but around one-quarter of the carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere dissolves into the ocean. Dissolved carbon dioxide makes seawater more acidic—a process called ocean acidification—and its effects have already been observed: the shells of sea butterflies, also known as pteropods, have begun dissolving in the Antarctic.

Tiny sea butterflies are related to snails, but use their muscular foot to swim in the water instead of creep along a surface. Many species have thin, hard shells made of calcium carbonate that are especially sensitive to changes in the ocean’s acidity. Their sensitivity and cosmopolitan nature make them an alluring study group for scientists who want to better understand how acidification will affect ocean organisms. But some pteropod species are proving to do just fine in more acidic water, while others have shells that dissolve quickly. So why do some species perish while others thrive?

It’s a hard question to answer when scientists can hardly tell pteropod species apart in the first place. The cone-shaped pteropod shown here is in a group of shelled sea butterflies called thecosomes, from the Greek for “encased body.” There are two other groups: the pseudothecosomes have gelatinous shells, and the gymnosomes (“naked body”) have none at all. Within these groups it can be hard to tell who’s who, especially when relying on looks alone. Scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History are using genetics to uncover the differences among the species.

This effort is led by zoologist Karen Osborn, who has a real knack for photography: in college, she struggled over whether to major in art or science. After collecting living animals while SCUBA diving in the open ocean, she brings them back to the research ship and photographs each in a shallow tank of clear water with a Canon 5D camera with a 65mm lens, using three to four flashes to capture the colors of the mostly-transparent critters. The photographs have scientific use—to capture never-before-recorded images of the living animals—and to “inspire interest in these weird, wild animals,” she said. All of these photos were taken in the Pacific Ocean off the coasts of Mexico and California.

This gymnosome (Pneumodermopsis sp.) pulls shelled pteropods from their shells with a set of suckers. Photo: © Karen Osborn

Although sea butterflies in the gymnosome group, like the one seen above, don’t have shells and are therefore not susceptible to the dangers of ocean acidification, their entire diet consists of shelled pteropods. If atmospheric CO₂ continues to rise due to the burning of fossil fuels and, in turn, the ocean becomes more acidic, their prey source may disappear—indirectly endangering these stunning predators and all the fish, squid and other animals that feed on the gymnosomes.

Cavolinia uncinata. Photo: © Karen Osborn

For years, sea butterflies were only collected by net. When collected this way, the animals (such as Cavolinia uncinata above) retract their fleshy “wings” and bodies into pencil eraser-sized shells, which often break in the process. Researchers then drop the collected pteropods into small jars of alcohol for preservation, which causes the soft parts to shrivel—leaving behind just the shell. Scientists try to sort the sea butterflies into species by comparing the shells alone, but without being able to see the whole animals, they may miss the full diversity of pteropods.

This may be the same species as the previous sea butterfly (Cavolinia uncinata), or it could be a different species that has gone unnoticed for decades. Photo: © Karen Osborn

More recently, scientists such as Osborn and Smithsonian researcher Stephanie Bush have begun collecting specimens by hand while SCUBA diving in the open sea. This blue-water diving allows her to collect and photograph fragile organisms. As she and her colleagues observe living organisms in more detail, they are realizing that animals they had thought were the same species, in fact, may not be! This shelled pteropod (Cavolinia uncinata) is considered the same species as the one in the previous photo. Because their fleshy parts look so different, however, Bush is analyzing each specimen’s genetic code to establish whether they really are the same species.

Mass of Cavolinia uncinata eggs. Photo: © Karen Osborn

This string of eggs shot out of Cavolinia uncinata when it was being observed under the microscope. The eggs are attached to one another in a gelatinous mass, and, had they not been self-contained in a petri dish, would have floated through the water until the new pteropods emerged as larvae. Their reproduction methods aren’t well studied, but we know that pteropods start off as males and once they reach a certain size switch over to females. This sexual system, known as sequential hermaphroditism, may boost reproduction because bigger females can produce more eggs.

In the Arctic, this pteropod species (Limacina helicina) can compose half of the zooplankton swimming in the water column. Photo: © Karen Osborn

This pteropod (Limacina helicina) has taken a beating from being pulled through a trawl net: you can see the broken edges of its shell. An abundant species with black flesh, each of these sea butterflies are the size of a large grain of sand. In certain conditions they “bloom” and, when fish eat too many, the pteropod’s black coloring stains the fishes’ guts black.

The shell of Clio recurva is a perfect landing strip for a colony of hydroids. Photo: © Karen Osborn

Not only is the inside of this shell home to a pteropod (Clio recurva), but the outside houses a colony of hydroids—the small pink flower-like animals connected by transparent tubing all over the shell. Hydroids, small, predatory animals related to jellyfish, need to attach to a surface in the middle of the ocean to build their colony, and the tiny shell of Clio is the perfect landing site. While it’s a nice habitat for the hydroids, this shell probably provides less than ideal protection for the pteropod: the opening is so large that a well equipped predator, such as larger shell-less pteropods, can likely just reach in and pull it out. “I would want a better house, personally,“ says Osborn.

It was once thought that Clione limacina was found in the Antarctic and Arctic, but it’s likely that they are two separate species. Photo: © Karen Osborn

Gymnosomes are pteropods that lack shells and have a diet almost entirely composed of shelled pteropods. This species (Clione limacina), exclusively feeds on Limacina helicina (the black-fleshed pteropod a few slides back). They grab their shelled relative with six tentacle-like arms, and then use grasping jaws to suck their meal out of the shell.

  This post was written by Emily Frost and Hannah Waters. Learn more about the ocean from the Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal.

Terminal Mirage 2, 2003. Credit: David Maisel/INSTITUTE

For almost 30 years, David Maisel has been photographing areas of environmental degradation. He hires a local pilot to take him up in a four-seater Cessna, a type of plane he likens to an old Volkswagen beetle with wings, and then, anywhere from 500 to 11,000 feet in altitude, he cues the pilot to bank the plane. With a window propped open, Maisel snaps photographs of the clear-cut forests, strip mines or evaporation ponds below.

American Mine (Carlin NV 2), 2007. Credit: David Maisel/INSTITUTE

The resulting images are beautiful and, at the same, absolutely unnerving. What exactly are those blood-red stains? As a nod to the confusing state they place viewers in, Maisel calls his photographs black maps, borrowing from a poem of the same title by contemporary American poet Mark Strand. “Nothing will tell you / where you are,” writes Strand. “Each moment is a place / you’ve never been.”

The Mining Project (Butte MT 3), 1989. Credit: David Maisel/INSTITUTE

Maisel’s latest book, Black Maps: American Landscape and the Apocalyptic Sublime, is a retrospective of his career. It features more than 100 photographs from seven aerial projects he has worked on since 1985. Maisel began with what Julian Cox, the founding curator of photography at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, calls in the book an “extensive investigation” of Bingham Canyon outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. His photographs capture the dramatic layers, gouges and textures of the open-pit mine, which holds the distinction of being the largest in the world.

This series expanded to include other mining sites in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Montana, until eventually Maisel made the leap from black and white to color photography, capturing the bright chemical hues of cyanide-leaching fields in The Mining Project (a selection shown above). He also turned his lens to log flows in Maine’s rivers and lakes in a project called The Forest and the dried bed of California’s Owens Lake, drained to supply Los Angeles with water, in The Lake Project.

Oblivion, as the photographer describes on his personal Web site, was a “coda” to The Lake Project; for this series of black and white photographs, reversed like x-rays, Maisel made the tight network of streets and highways in Los Angeles his subject—see an example below. Then, in one of his most recent aerial endeavors, titled Terminal Mirage (top), he photographed the Mondrian-like evaporation ponds around Utah’s Great Salt Lake.

Oblivion 2N, 2004. Credit: David Maisel/INSTITUTE

All combined, Maisel’s body of work is what Cox calls “a medley of terrains transformed by humankind to serve its needs and desires.” The narrative thread, he adds in the introduction to Black Maps, is the photographer’s aim to convey humans’ “uneasy and conflicted relationship with nature.”

I wrote about Maisel’s photography for Smithsonian in 2008, when his “Black Maps” exhibition was touring the country, and at that time, the Long Island, New York-native hedged from being called an “environmental activist.” As Cox astutely notes, “The photographs do not tell a happy story,” and yet they also “do not assign any blame.” Maisel is attracted to these landscapes because of their brilliant colors, eye-catching compositions and the way they emote both beauty and danger.

The Lake Project 20, 2002. Credit: David Maisel/INSTITUTE

Maisel’s photographs are disorienting; it is a mental exercise just trying to orient oneself within the frame. Without providing solid ground for viewers to stand on, the images inevitably spark more questions than they do answers.

Each one is like a Rorschach test, in that the subject is, to some extent, what viewers make it to be. Blood vessels. Polished marble. Stained-glass windows. What is it that you see?

An exhibition of Maisel’s large-scale photographs, Black Maps: American Landscape and the Apocalyptic Sublime, is on view at the CU Art Museum, University of Colorado Boulder, through May 11, 2013. From there, the show will travel to the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Scottsdale, Arizona, where it will be on display from June 1 to September 1, 2013.

A difference of nearly four decades: at top, a ski area in Aspen, Colorado last year, captured by Ron Hoffman; at bottom, the same location in 1974, shot by Dustin Wesley. Credit: US EPA

In 1971, about 70 photographers, commissioned by the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency, set out to document the American landscape on just 40 rolls of film each. They trudged through coal mines and landfills, traversed deserts and farms and discovered big cities’ small corridors. The end result was DOCUMERICA, a collection of more than 15,000 shots capturing the country’s environmental problems—from water and air pollution to industrial health hazards—over six years.

Decades later, a new generation of photographers is collecting ”after” pictures. In the past two years, the EPA has collected more than 2,000 photos, all of which loosely depict the environment. The State of the Environment Photography Project, as the effort is called, asks photographers to take shots that match scenes from DOCUMERICA, to show how the landscape has changed since the 1970s. It also asks photographers to capture new or different environmental issues, with the idea that these modern scenes could in turn be re-photographed in the distant future; the EPA has released several of these shots for this year’s Earth Day. The project will accept submissions through the end of 2013.

The EPA explains that DOCUMERICA became a baseline for America’s environmental history, and that tracking change is key for public eco-consciousness.

Both images, taken by Michael Philip Manheim, show a section of East Boston in the 1970s and present day. Decades ago, rows of triple-deckers lined the streets of the neighborhood. Today, only one remains, the sole survivor of nearby airport expansion. Credit: Michael Philip Manheim/US EPA

There’s more to capturing environmental issues on camera than shooting smoke stacks and nuclear plants. The most effective way to convey them is to photograph people, says Michael Philip Manheim. Manheim, one of DOCUMERICA’s photographers, documented noise pollution in East Boston in the ’70s, portraying the deterioration of a close-knit community as nearby Logan Airport expanded its runways. That’s what made DOCUMERICA strike a chord with the public years ago, providing closeups of miners suffering from black lung and kids playing basketball in cramped housing developments.

“Meet the affected people, let them know how you care, find out what impacts them the most,” advises Manheim about matching his photos today. He still has the cameras he used for his assignment, which he treats as “sculptures” that stay hidden in closets. “After that, it’s time to energize a camera, and not by posing pictures but by reacting candidly to what is going on in the lives of your subjects.”

At left, DOCUMERICA photographer David Falconer’s shot of the Weyerhaeuser Paper Mills and Reynolds Metal Plant along the Columbia River in Washington State. At right, Craig Leaper’s re-creation. Credit: US EPA

Though some landscapes remain the same, Manheim says what’s changed since DOCUMERICA is the level of awareness of environmental issues. The photographer attributes this increase to the rapid spread of digital information, a visual online petition that he says Bostonians could have used to fight back in the 1970s.

At left, the Great Falls of Maine’s Androscoggin River, with the city of Lewiston in the background, captured by Charles Steinhacker in 1973. At right, a replication of the same scene by Munroe Graham. Credit: US EPA

The “now” and “then” photos show varying degrees of change when placed side-by-side, funky fashions and clunky cars aside. Clumps of unnatural foam continue to bob along polluted waters near industrial buildings, but considerably less smog hangs in the air of some urban cities. In an “after” shot of a section of John Day Dam between Oregon and Washington State, a set of wind turbines appear on the background terrain.

At left, the John Day Dam viewed from the Washington side of the Columbia River, photographed by David Falconer in 1973. At right, a similar view, including wind turbines along the ridge, taken by Scott Butner in 2012. Credit: US EPA

The ease of digital photography will help propel the current iteration of an environmental snapshot, Manheim says. When shooting on film, photographers can’t know right away whether they’ve taken “the shot.” Digital allows them to examine the first few shots of a scene, and then find better ways to convey its details.

“You don’t stand around, waiting for something to happen. You exert mental and physical energy,” Manheim says. For anyone wanting to participate in the State of the Environment project, the photographer has some advice: “Set the scene in your coverage, and then you go for the ‘good stuff.’ You get close, closer, closest. You move in to explore and find the epitomizing image, close and meaningful, that symbolizes the situation.”

In the 1970s, Manheim got to know the people who lived in the colorful triple-decker row houses lining Neptune Road in East Boston. Planes soared overhead nearly every three minutes, prompting the nearby residents to cover their ears from the deafening roar of the engines. He captured one of these low-flying planes in a photograph, shown above. In 2012, Manheim returned to the site to document it yet again. The “then” and “now” pairing tells a story that has played out over decades. Eventually, the adjacent airport built runways flush to the streets’ backyards and driveways, and today, only one home remains.

South Boston’s Moakley Park. At left, Ernst Halberstadt smog-heavy shot in 1973; at right, Roger Archibald’s 2012 take. Once a muralist for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Halberstadt documented city life in Boston for DOCUMERICA. Credit: US EPA

ZnO Fall Flowers. Image by Audrey Forticaux, a graduate student in the Chemistry Department.

“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.”

—Jules Henri Poincare, a French mathematician (1854-1912)

Earlier this month, the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced the winners of its 2013 Cool Science Image contest. From an MRI of a monkey’s brain to the larva of a tropical caterpillar, a micrograph of the nerves in a zebrafish’s tail to another of the hairs on a leaf, this year’s crop is impressive—and one that certainly supports what Collage of Arts and Sciences believes at its very core. That is, that the boundary between art and science is often imperceptible.

Zebrafish neural network. Image by Pui-ying Lam, a graduate student studying cellular and molecular biology. A fluorescent molecule makes the neurons in the tail of a live zebrafish visible.

The Why Files, a weekly science news publication put out by the university, organizes the contest; it started three years ago as an offshoot of the Why Files’ popular “Cool Science Image” column. The competition rallies faculty, graduate and undergraduate students to submit the beautiful scientific imagery produced in their research.

Brain image. Image by Christopher Coe, a faculty member in the Psychology Department. This image of a monkey’s brain was created, thanks to an MRI technique called diffusion tensor imaging.

“The motivation was to provide a venue and greater exposure for some of the artful scientific imagery we encounter,” says Terry Devitt, the coordinator of the contest. “We see a lot of pictures that don’t get much traction beyond their scientific context and thought that was a shame, as the pictures are both beautiful and serve as an effective way to communicate science.”

Middle Earth. Image by Sheryl A. Rakowski, senior research specialist in the Bacteriology Department. Slime mold, which typically live as single-celled amoebae, create “flash mobs” when faced with a food shortage. These flash mobs meld into multicellular organisms.

Most of the time, these images are studied in a clinical context, Devitt explains. But, increasingly, museums, universities and photography contests are sharing them with the public. “There is an ongoing revolution in science imaging and there is the potential to see things that could never before be seen, let alone imaged in great detail,” says Devitt. “It is important that people have access to these pictures to learn more about science.”

Air Sea Interaction. Image by Rick Kohrs, senior instrument technician at the Space Science and Engineering Center. Superstorm Sandy is colliding with the East Coast of the United States in this image of water vapor and sea surface temperatures from October 28, 2012.

This year, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s scientific community entered 104 photographs, micrographs, illustrations and videos to the Cool Science Image contest—a number that trumps last year’s participation by about 25 percent. The submissions are judged, quite fittingly, by a cross-disciplinary panel of eight scientists and artists. The ten winners receive small prizes (a $100 gift certificate to participating businesses in downtown Madison) and large format prints of their images.

Trichomes. Image by Emily Kief, undergraduate student, Botany Department. This scanning electron micrograph shows growths, or trichomes, on a leaf.

“When I see an image I love, I know the second I see it. I know it because it is beautiful,” says Ahna Skop, a judge and geneticist at the university. She admits she has a bias for images capturing nematode embryos and mitosis, her areas of expertise, but like many people, she also gravitates to images that remind her of something familiar. The scanning electron micrograph, shown at the top of this post, for example, depicts nanoflowers of zinc oxide. As the name “nanoflower” suggests, these chemical compounds form petals and flowers. Audrey Forticaux, a chemistry graduate student at UW-Madison, added artificial color to this black and white micrograph to highlight the rose-like shapes.

Hoodia. Image by Mo Fayyaz, distinguished faculty associate, Botany Department. A macroscopic view of the center of a hoodia flower—a succulent native to South Africa and Namibia.

Steve Ackerman, an atmospheric scientist at the university and a fellow judge, describes his approach: “I try to note my first response to the work—am I shocked, awed, baffled or annoyed?” He is bothered when he sees meteorological radar images that use the colors red and green to depict data, since they can be difficult for color blind people to read. “I jot down those first impressions and then try to figure out why I reacted that way,” he says.

Lunaria annua. Image by Kata Dosa, graduate student, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. The seeds of Lunaria annua can be seen through the plant’s translucent seed pods. In fact, you can even see the umbilical cord-like structure, called a funiculus, that connects the seed to the placenta.

After considering artistic qualities, and the gut reactions they trigger, the panel considers the technical elements of the entries, along with the science they convey. Skop looks for a certain crispness and clarity in winning images. The science at play within the frame also has to be unique, she says. If it is something that she has seen before, the image probably won’t pass muster.

Automeris banus. Image by Peggy Boone, graduate student, Zoology Department. This moth, in its larva form, stung Boone when she encountered it in Mexico’s Palenque National Park. Nonetheless, with a swollen hand, the field biologist managed to capture this photograph.

Skop hails from a family of artists. “My father was a sculptor and my mother a ceramicist and art teacher. All of my brothers and sisters are artists, yet I ended up a scientist,” she says. “I always tell people that genetically I’m an artist. But, there is no difference between the two.”

Beta catenin. Image by Vastal Mehta, research associate in the School of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Comparative Biosciences. This micrograph shows a cluster of cells in a transgenic mouse, exhibiting high levels of beta catenin, a protein that plays a role in prostate development.

If anything, Skop adds, the winning entries in the Cool Science Image contest show that “nature is our art museum.”

Jupiter’s innermost large moon, Io, is extremely volcanic. “If you look closely on the upper left and upper right horizon, you can see eruptions in the process of happening,” says Benson. “We know that at least 400 volcanos are continuously blasting magma into space from Io.” Mosaic composite photograph. Galileo, July 3, 1999. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures.

At the outset of both his new book, Planetfall, and his exhibition of the same title now at the Washington, D.C. headquarters of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, photographer Michael Benson defines the word “planetfall.” Planetfall, he states, is “the act or an instance of sighting a planet after a space voyage.”

It is really the existence, in the last 50 years, of spacecraft orbiting the planets of our solar system that has necessitated the term. “Each of these far-flung machines is following the traditions blazed by the great Earthbound explorers, but when its destination comes into view, we can no longer call that dramatic moment ‘landfall,’” according to the exhibition. “Hence ‘planetfall’—the moment of arrival at other worlds.”

In his latest series of images, Benson attempts to lift us off terra firma and bring this awe-inspiring moment to us. His 40 large-scale photographs, hanging in the AAAS Art Gallery, are remarkably crisp views of the rings of Saturn, moons in transit, a sunset on Mars and volcanic eruptions on Jupiter’s moon, Io, among other marvels. Each image is in “true color,” as Benson puts it.

To make his photographs, Benson starts by perusing through thousands of raw image data collected on missions led by NASA—Cassini, Galileo, MESSENGER, Viking and Voyager, among others—and the European Space Agency. He has compared this process to panning for gold—the precious gold nuggets being beautiful sequences of images, rarely seen by the public, that he can piece together into one seamless photograph. It can take anywhere from tens to hundreds of raw frames to arrange, like a mosaic, one legible composite image. Then rendering the photograph in realistic colors adds another layer of complexity. Benson describes the process in his book:

“In order for a full-color image to be created, the spacecraft needs to have taken at minimum two, but preferably three, individual photographs of a given subject, with each exposed through a different filter…. Ideally, those filters are red, green, and blue, in which case a composite image color image can usually be created without too much trouble…. If a red and a blue filtered shot are available but not a green, for example, a synthetic green image can be created by mixing the other two colors.”

Uranus and its rings. Mosaic composite photograph. Voyager, January 24, 1986. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures.

Some of the colors are quite striking. Jupiter’s moon, Io, is a brilliant yellow, in one of Benson’s photographs (shown at top). To me, it looks like a shiny bowling ball, whereas for Benson it calls to mind the yellow rim of Morning Glory Pool in Yellowstone National Park. “It’s all sulphur,” he says. Then, there is the photographer’s very modernist-looking portrait of Uranus (above) and its rings in a stunning robin’s egg blue, assembled from raw images taken by the Voyager spacecraft as it flew by the planet on January 24, 1986. Uranus’ rotation axis is roughly parallel to the plane of the solar system, making its rings vertical in this view. ”This is about as close, I believe, to what the human eye would see as it is possible to produce using existing data,” Benson explains.

The sights take some time to digest. At a recent preview of the AAAS exhibition, I watched as onlookers approached the photographs, oriented themselves with their subjects and tried to make sense of the shadows, streaks and gouges they saw. As TIME reported on its blog, LightBox, “Benson’s visions demand more than a single look; the longer one spends with his vast landscapes, considering the scale and scope, the more they facilitate a state of meditation.”

Meditate on these selections from Planetfall, on display at the AAAS Art Gallery through June 28, 2013.

Saturn with Mimas. Mimas, one of Saturn’s moons, as seen against the shadows cast by the planet’s rings onto its northern hemisphere. Cassini, November 7, 2004. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures.

Saturn, Mimas and Tethys. Mosaic composite photograph. Cassini, July 16, 2005. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures.

Sun on the Pacific. The view seen from the International Space Station at an altitude of 235 miles. ISS 007 crew, July 21, 2003. Credit: NASA JSC/ISS 07 crew/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures.

Transit of Io. The volcanic moon passes across the face of Jupiter. Mosaic composite photograph. Cassini, January 1, 2001. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures.

Eclipse of Sun by Earth. Ultraviolet exposure, Solar Dynamics Observatory, Apri 2, 2011. Credit: NASA GSFC/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures.

Surface of Jupiter’s Moon Europa. Galileo, June 27, 1996. Credit: NASA/JPL/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures.

Crescent Neptune and its largest satellite, Triton. Mosaic composite photograph. Voyager 2, August 31, 1989. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures.

Enceladus Vents Into Space. Saturn’s moon Enceladus geysers water into space from its south polar region. Mosaic composite photograph. Cassini, December 25, 2009. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Michael Benson, Kinetikon Pictures.

San Francisco 37° 48′ 30″ N 2010-10-9 Lst 20:58. © Thierry Cohen.

Last week in Collage, I interviewed Caleb Cain Marcus, a New York City-based photographer who spent the last two years documenting glaciers around the world. When he composed his photographs of glaciers in Iceland, New Zealand, Norway and Alaska, Marcus obscured the actual horizon. It was an experiment, he explained, to see how it affected his viewers’ sense of scale.

The idea was born out of the Colorado native’s own experience with city living. “Living in New York City, unless you live very high up, you never see the horizon, which is really kind of odd,” said Marcus. “I’m not sure we are really aware of the effects of not being able to see it.”

In a similar vein, French photographer Thierry Cohen worries about city dwellers not being able to see the starry sky. With light and air pollution plaguing urban areas, it is not as if residents can look up from their streets and roof decks to spot constellations and shooting stars. So, what effect does this have? Cohen fears, as he recently told the New York Times, that the hazy view has spawned a breed of urbanite, sheltered by his and her manmade environs, that “forgets and no longer understands nature.”

Tokyo 35° 41′ 36″ N 2011-11-16 Lst 23:16. © Thierry Cohen.

Three years ago, Cohen embarked on a grand plan to help remedy this situation. He’d give city dwellers a taste of what they were missing. The photographer crisscrossed the globe photographing cityscapes from Shanghai to Los Angeles to Rio de Janeiro, by day—when cars’ head and taillights and lights shining from the windows of buildings were not a distraction. At each location, Cohen diligently recorded the time, angle, latitude and longitude of the shot. Then, he journeyed to remote deserts and plains at corresponding latitudes, where he pointed his lens to the night sky. For New York, that meant the Black Rock Desert in Nevada. For Hong Kong, the Western Sahara in Africa. For Rio and São Paulo, the Atacama Desert in Chile, and for Cohen’s native Paris, the prairies of northern Montana. Through his own digital photography wizardry, Cohen created seamless composites of his city and skyscapes.

Rio de Janeiro 22° 56′ 42″ S 2011-06-04 Lst 12:34. © Thierry Cohen.

“By traveling to places free from light pollution but situated on precisely the same latitude as his cities (and by pointing his camera at the same angle in each case), he obtains skies which, as the world rotates about its axis, are the very ones visible above the cities a few hours earlier or later,” writes photography critic Francis Hodgson, in an essay featured on Cohen’s Web site. “He shows, in other words, not a fantasy sky as it might be dreamt, but a real one as it should be seen.”

Paris 48° 50′ 55″ N 2012-08-13 Lst 22:15. © Thierry Cohen.

Cohen’s meticulousness pays off. While he could present a clear night sky taken at any latitude, he instead captures the very night sky that, in megacities, is hidden from sight. The photographer keeps some details of his process a secret, it seems. So, I can only suspect that Cohen takes his picture of a city, determines what the night sky looks like in that city on that day and then quickly travels to a remote area to find the same night sky viewed from a different location. This precision makes all the difference. “Photography has always had a very tight relationship to reality,” Hodgson goes on to say. “A good sky is not the right sky. And the right sky in each case has a huge emotional effect.”

It is an emotional effect, after all, that Cohen desires. The photographer wants his “Darkened Cities” series, now on display at Danziger Gallery in New York City, to raise awareness about light pollution. Spoken like a true artist, Cohen told the New York Times, that he wants to show the detached urbanite the stars “to help him dream again.”

New York 40° 44′ 39″ N 2010-10-13 Lst 0:04. © Thierry Cohen.

“There is an urban mythology which is already old, in which the city teems with energy and illumines everything around it. All roads lead to Rome, we are told. Cohen is telling us the opposite,” writes Hodgson. “It is impossible not to read these pictures the way the artist wants them read: cold, cold cities below, cut off from the seemingly infinite energies above. It’s a powerful reversal, and one very much in tune with a wave of environmental thinking of the moment.”

Hong Kong 22° 16′ 38″ N 2012-03-22 Lst 14:00. © Thierry Cohen.

Los Angeles 34° 03′ 20″ N 2010-10-09 Lst 21:50. © Thierry Cohen.

Shanghai 31° 13′ 22″ N 2012-03-17 Lst 14:47. © Thierry Cohen.

New York 40° 42′ 16″ N 2010-10-9 Lst 3:40. © Thierry Cohen.

São Paulo 23° 33′ 22″ S 2011-06-05 Lst 11:44. © Thierry Cohen.

“Darkened Cities” is on display at Danziger Gallery through May 4, 2013.

Perito Moreno, Plate I, 2010. Patagonia. © Caleb Cain Marcus.

What happens when you lose your grip on the horizon? How much does it warp your sense of scale? One trek on the 97-square-mile Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia and Caleb Cain Marcus was hooked by these questions of perspective. With that experience, in January 2010, the New York City-based photographer launched a two-year odyssey, documenting, in his own minimalist style, glaciers all around the world—in Iceland, Alaska, New Zealand and Norway.

Marcus shares 3o photographs taken in his travels in his latest book, A Portrait of Ice. The images—three of which were recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art—are “eerily gorgeous and unusual,” writes Marvin Heiferman, a known critic and curator, in an essay featured in the book. “Instead of picturing monumental walls of ice that advance over and disrupt what lies beneath, or icebergs that break away from glaciers to float majestically, if threateningly, at sea, these photographs suggest that glaciers cover the earth’s surface lightly, like a sheet, rather than bearing down upon it,” he adds. The comparison that Heiferman makes later in the essay is compelling: “The jagged rocks, ridges and pinnacles that poke through the frigid surfaces don’t register as being particularly dangerous, but more like the eccentrically rendered landforms you might soar over in a dream or in the elegant flight-simulation of a video game.”

Sólheimajökull, Plate II, 2010. Iceland. © Caleb Cain Marcus.

Intrigued, I recently had the opportunity to interview Marcus by phone. We discussed some of the thoughts driving the project and his process:

When you exhibit the series, you like the photographs to measure 43 inches by 54 inches. Why do you like to work in this large-scale format?

Obviously, the glaciers themselves are quite large. I think it is easier to get immersed in something when it is large. I think small makes things potentially more intimate. If it is small, you are required to go up close to it and inspect it. If it is large, you can sort of be overwhelmed by it.

What inspired your initial trip to Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia?

I was visiting someone in Buenos Aires, and then we took a side trip and flew outside of El Calafate, which is a small town in Patagonia. Near El Calafate was Perito Moreno. It seemed like a good opportunity to go and visit a glacier. I grew up in Colorado, and I have a love for the mountains and open space, which I don’t get much of in New York.

Fláajökull, Plate I, 2010. Iceland. © Caleb Cain Marcus.

How did you explore the glacier? What did you get to do?

I just hiked around on it. Many glaciers are covered with snow, so you don’t really see them as glaciers as much, at least I don’t, because you are not seeing the ice. You are seeing the snow, which is layering on top of the ice. This was probably the first hard-ice glacier I was on.

What was it about the experience and the photographs that you shot that really inspired you to spend the next two years photographing glaciers around the world?

The ice landscape was certainly one that I hadn’t visited before. I think that many people never really get a chance to visit it or never choose to visit it. Most of us have seen some form of a desert and a forest and an ocean, but we haven’t really just seen ice. It is quite a different ecosystem, and one that fascinates me quite a bit. Everything is so open and so expansive. I think it was that feeling of expanse and emptiness and solitude, on a personal level, that made me want to be there.

When I took the pictures, I had this idea to try to see what would happen if the horizon disappeared. Living in New York City, unless you live very high up, you never see the horizon, which is really kind of odd and something that took me a few years to realize. You are missing that. It is such a grounding presence for people to be able to see the horizon. I’m not sure we are really aware of the effects of not being able to see it. I thought, okay, if I get rid of the horizon or I try to, how is that going to affect the feeling of the picture? You lose a sense of scale.

Nigardsbreen, Plate I, 2011. Norway. © Caleb Cain Marcus.

Many of the images are vertical, with mostly sky and then the surface of the glacier occupying just a small portion at the bottom. Why did you choose to compose them this way?

I think there are three general options. One would be that you would have about half glacier and half sky. I think that would be too balanced. Then, you could have much more glacier than sky, which would work, but it would produce something that is much denser. I didn’t really feel like the glaciers were so dense or so heavy, even though they are so massive. I wanted to create a feeling of more openness; I think if you have more sky than glacier that helps to do it. It helps to make it float a little more. Having just this small amount of density of color at the bottom, contrasted by that wide open space, also creates a balance in a way. Because the sky is more empty, they still sort of take up equal weight on the image.

Fox, Plate IV, 2010. New Zealand. © Caleb Cain Marcus.

Do you want the viewer to lose perspective?

I would say probably most people looking at it wouldn’t realize that there is no horizon—at least, not consciously. But I think that one of the things it does is it makes it feel less familiar. When something is less familiar, then we look at it more closely, instead of just glancing at it and saying, “Oh, I know what that is. It is a glacier, or that’s a tree or a person or an apartment building.” If it has a little bit of a twist, then I think people spend a little more time or there is a little more examining. Maybe there is more potential that there is some effect on them, which would be ideal.

How did you think about color?

In terms of the colors of the glaciers, whether they are blue or gray or more cyan, I didn’t have too much choice. I was looking for the glaciers with more color. There are a few that are almost black and white, which are in Iceland. That was after the volcano erupted a couple of years ago, so those have the mist and the ash from the volcano. It doesn’t give it an intense color, it is giving it a very subtle color.

Sheridan, Plate III, 2010. Alaska. © Caleb Cain Marcus.

Did you have certain criteria for the glaciers and locations that you picked?

That was one of the challenging aspects. You never really knew what you would get. I would look at topographic images and satellite images. I would talk to other climbers and get a general sense of what a glacier I was going to might look like. But whenever I got there, it was all a surprise.

I was looking for texture and color, so that they had some kind of resonance, some personality. In the book, there are nine different glaciers. I probably went to more than 20 glaciers, so only a small number of them are represented. The other ones, either I wasn’t on the ball or else the glacier wasn’t on the ball. Somehow the communication between the two of us didn’t work out.

Fjallsjökull, Plate I, 2010. Iceland. © Caleb Cain Marcus.

I imagine there were a bunch of logistics that went into these trips.

In terms of getting to the glaciers, pretty much all of them required a hike. I kayaked into some of them and took a helicopter once or twice. Most of the time I had a guide. Of course, the guides are there to find access to the glacier and then also as a safety measure or policy. In that regard, they want to make sure that you come back in one piece, which is a good thing, but it also means that they always try to keep reins on you. I don’t like having someone holding me back. I am always running around, and they are always yelling at me. It would usually take a few days for our relationship to sort of coalesce into something smoother. There would be some friction in the beginning. Then, after a few days, we would have a better understanding of each other.

The guides were quite resourceful in terms of their information. I actually met with a few scientists on various glaciers. In Norway, I met with a couple of them measuring the speed of the flow of the glacier. So, I would always take the opportunity to talk to them.

Franz Josef, Plate I, 2010. New Zealand. © Caleb Cain Marcus.

In your own essay in A Portrait of Ice, you write, “The Inuit elders say the melting of the ice is the land crying out in pain. Now we must listen.” The statement implies an activism on your part. Is that one of your intentions? Do you want viewers to care more about the environment and about the melting of glaciers?

I think photographing glaciers I was pretty aware that even if there wasn’t too much of that sentiment that it would be there in the background. I feel very close to the earth or however one wants to term it. I think that we have more than half of the people living in cities now in the U.S. With that, we are losing an awareness for the natural environment. Whether these [photographs] bring people closer to the environment or not, I don’t really know. I certainly think that if people were more connected to it, that they would act differently in their lives. A lot of the people who make decisions on a high level are, I think, even more detached because they are so immersed in running corporations or in making more money. I think that the planet suffers because of that, and so do we.

 These images are excerpted from the book, A Portrait of Ice, published by Damiani.

The Milky Way Galaxy Exploding from Mount Rainier. Photo by David Morrow (Everett, Washington). Photographed at Sunrise Point in Mount Rainier National Park, Washington, October 6, 2012.

David Morrow, a 27-year-old aerospace engineer by day and budding photographer by night, was perched at Sunrise Point on the evening of October 6, 2012. From the popular viewing spot in Mount Rainier National Park, he had a clear view of Rainier, the 14,411-foot beastly stratovolcano to his west. As he recalls, at about 9 p.m. the sun had set and the stars began to appear. Filling the viewfinder of his Nikon D800, quite brilliantly, was the Milky Way.

“It is not often that you see the Milky Way line up so perfectly with an earthly object,” said Morrow, when his resulting photograph (shown above) was selected as a finalist in Smithsonian.com’s 2012 photo contest. “The stars almost looked as though they were erupting from the mountain and I knew this was a moment in time that I had to capture.”

For a decade now, Smithsonian magazine’s annual photo contest has been a loving ode to these moments. Each year, photographers from around the world submit entries in five categories near and dear to us: the Natural World, Travel, People, Americana and Altered Images. Our photo editors, who have reviewed more than 290,000 photographs from upwards of 90 countries in the contest’s history, then select 10 finalists in each category.

This week, Smithsonian.com announced the finalists for the 2012 photo contest. At this point, the public is invited to vote on a readers’ choice winner, and, ultimately, our editors will select category winners and a grand prize winner, to be revealed later this spring. We here at Collage of Arts and Sciences have a special affinity for the Natural World images, which beautifully capture animals, plants and landscapes; geological or climatological features; and scientific processes and endeavors.

So what makes a finalist stand out from other entries?

“Quite simply, I look for something that I have not seen before,” says Maria G. Keehan, Smithsonian magazine’s art director. For the Natural World submissions, she and her colleagues sifted through a fair share of photographs of pets, rainbows, mating insects and horses in misty light (“Misty anything has kind of taken its toll on me,” says Keehan) to parse out images that accomplish something truly unique—like capturing an unusual or rare animal behavior. “Of course good technique and composition are always part of the judging structure, but originality is what strikes me. I really look for things that make you gasp or question,” she adds. “Not just, ‘Oooo, beautiful bird,’ but ‘Wow. Look at the perspective on that. They shot the image through the bird’s wings!”

To make the cut, a photograph has to evoke a visceral reaction. Future contestants, take note. Keehan’s advice is this: “Trust your (natural!) instincts about what is peculiar, remarkable or sublime.”

Without further ado, here are the remainder of the 10th annual photo contest’s Natural World finalists:

Baby Owl in Studio. Photo by Phillip Pilkington (Southport, UK). Photographed in Southport, UK, November 2012.

Phillip Pilkington snapped a portrait of a fluffy, four-week-old Tawny owl (above) at a bird enthusiast’s home in Southport, UK. “I was aiming to do a traditional studio portrait of an unusual studio subject,” he says. The owl was still, and so it made for an ideal sitter, the photographer recalls. “I just concentrated on the photography,” Pilkington adds. “I wanted to do a close-up shot, [but] at the same time I didn’t want to get too close, and that is why I chose to crop the image.”

Visiting the Bronx Zoo. Photo by Vanessa Bartlett (New York, New York). October 2012, Bronx Zoo, New York City.

When Vanessa Bartlett took up photography last year, she needed, in her words, a “subject that wouldn’t shatter my fragile photography ego.” So, she went to the Bronx Zoo. On an October day, she photographed baboons, giraffes and lions, but it was a gorilla that stole her attention. “They’re majestic,” says Bartlett, of the primates. “But the expression he gave was what made me take the photo.”

Bartlett sat with the gorilla for about 30 minutes, just a pane of glass separating them. “Just as a photographer likes a look a model gives in the middle of a shoot, I saw a look I loved from the gorilla,” she says. “What I caught was a personal, private moment. That’s what’s so captivating.”

An Onlooker Witnesses the Annular Solar Eclipse as the Sun Sets on May 20, 2012. Photo by Colleen Pinski (Peyton, CO). Photographed in Albuquerque, NM, May 2012.

On May 20, 2012, Americans, especially on the west coast, were privy to an annular solar eclipse—where the moon blocks all but the outer ring of the sun. “My husband and I heard about the eclipse a few days before it happened,” says Colleen Pinski, who captured the image, above. “So, I was compelled to take some photos of it…I couldn’t miss the ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to shoot it.”

Antheraea Polyphemus Caterpillar Striking a Rather Devious-Looking Pose. Photo by Colin Hutton (Durham, North Carolina). Photographed in Duke Forest, North Carolina, September 2011.

Colin Hutton was in the Duke Forest, a 7,060-acre tract of land in North Carolina used for research, when he took this remarkable close-up of a caterpillar of a North American moth (Antheraea polyphemus). He was actually searching for jumping spiders, but this little guy was a welcome diversion. “I really like the glowing quality of the caterpillar’s skin and the devious look of its defensive posture,” says Hutton. “It reminds me of the character Mr. Burns from The Simpsons as he says ‘Excellent…’ while tapping his fingers together.”

Mummy, I Am Down Here, and Hungry! Photo by Bjorn Olesen (Singapore). Photographed in Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia, November, 2010.

Bjorn Olesen was on a week-long trip to Sarawak, Borneo, in November 2010, when he photographed this juvenile Spectacled Spiderhunter (Arachnothera flavigaster) calling out to its parents. “In my view the photo demonstrates the great strength of still photography: to freeze those magic moments that may have otherwise been unnoticed,” says Olesen. “The soft light, the inspiring pose, the color of the bird goes very well together with the beautiful palette of greens of the ferns.”

Breeding Penguins. Photo by Neal Piper (Washington, DC). Photographed at Damoy Point, Antarctica, January 2012.

Neal Piper spent 12 days in Antarctica in February 2012. “I have always been fascinated with penguins and dreamed of visiting Antarctica to see them in their natural habitat,” he says. To get to Damoy Point, where he took this photograph, Piper traveled three days by ship through the Drake Passage and then took a short jaunt on a small motorized raft to his campsite, where he would study a breeding colony of Gentoo penguins.

“Although it was a bitter cold evening, I woke up to a beautiful sunrise. The snow was glimmering upon the majestic mountains,” says Piper.  ”I looked over at the colony of Gentoo penguins and saw a few of them overlooking the cliff, almost as if they were enjoying the view. I grabbed my camera and watched them for about an hour until one of the adults and newborn chicks looked into the horizon. I knew right then I had the shot. After taking the photo I looked down at the viewfinder and instantly smiled.”

According to Piper, Gentoo penguins have funny personalities. “After studying them for a week, I discovered that they are very loving and protective to their newborn chicks. To build their nests, they pick up rocks with their beaks, usually stolen from another penguin nest, and place them on their nest. Once the perpetrator places the rock on its nest, the victim often reclaims it and places it back on its own nest.  It was a very entertaining scene,” he says.

A Man-Made Ice Geyser. Photo by Nathan Carlsen (Duluth, Minnesota). Photographed in Duluth, Minnesota, January 2012.

“A water pipe in Duluth is ‘bled’ every year to ensure it doesn’t freeze,” says Nathan Carlsen, the photographer who captured the finalist, above. “As the water freezes, it builds this amazing ice geyser.” As an experiment, the Minnesotan dangled a rope of LED lights down the geyser. “I knew it would light up well as it is perfectly clear ice, but I had know idea how beautiful it would be. Every year the formation looks a bit different and I go out to it to take a few more [photos]. But this one, the first one, still proves to be my best shot so far.”

Ants Holding Seeds. Photo by Eko Adiyanto (Bekasi, Indonesia). Photographed in Bekasi, West Java, Indonesia, April 2012.

Eko Adiyanto stumbled across this scene of ants fiercely gripping seeds in Bekasi, West Java, Indonesia, last April. He felt compelled to take the photograph, above, because it seemed like a super-ant feat of strength. “They are small but very powerful,” says Adiyanto. [Correction, March 13, 2013: As entomologist and Scientific American blogger Alex Wild addressed recently, Adiyanto did not stumble across this scene. In an email, the photographer has explained that he gave the seeds to the ants to bite and then lifted, placed and stacked the ants on the branch himself. Once the ants were in these positions, he took the photograph.]

A Pair of Bald Eagles Share a Meal. Photo by Don Holland (Dyer, Tennessee). Photographed in Reelfoot Lake State Park, Tennessee, January 2012.

Don Holland enjoys photographing birds in flight, particularly great egrets and bald eagles. He was driving a stretch of road in Reelfoot Lake State Park in northwest Tennessee when his wife spotted a pair of bald eagles in a dead tree nearby. “I stopped the car immediately and began photographing the eagle pair eating what appeared to be the remains of a coot. Since most of the food was gone, I realized I didn’t have time to mount the lens on the tripod to capture the action. I handheld the camera and lens for the sequence of photos I took in the short time before the eagles flew,” recalls Holland. “The sky was bright-cloudy, and the sun was beginning to peek through the clouds at 20-30 degrees over my right shoulder. With evenly dispersed and adequate light, I worked quickly to take advantage of the special opportunity of capturing the behavior of the eagle pair in an uncluttered background.”

See the finalists in the other four categories, and vote for the 10th Annual Photo Contest Readers’ Choice Award by 2PM EST on March 29.

Rowley’s Palm Pit Viper (Bothriechis rowleyi). This venomous snake, which ranges from two and a half to five feet in length, lives in the forests of Mexico. © Mark Laita.

Mark Laita captured plenty of photographs of snakes striking, their mouths agape, in the making of his new book, Serpentine. But, it wasn’t these aggressive, fear-inducing—and in his words, “sensational”—images that he was interested in. Instead, the Los Angeles-based photographer focused on the graceful contortions of the reptiles.

“It is not a snake book,” says Laita. As he explained to me in a phone interview, he had no scientific criteria for selecting the species he did, though herpetologists and snake enthusiasts will surely perk up when they see the photographs. “Really, it is more about color, form and texture,” he says. “For me, a snake does that beautifully.”

Albino Black Pastel Ball Python (Python regius). This three- to five-foot long constrictor lives in the grasslands and dry forests of Central and West Africa. © Mark Laita.

Over the course of the project, Laita visited zoos, breeders, private collections and antivenom labs in the United States and Central America to stage shoots of specimens he found visually compelling. “I would go to a place looking for this species and that species,” he says. “And, once I got there, they had 15 or 20 others that were great too.” If a particular snake’s colors were muted, Laita would ask the owner to call him as soon as the animal shed its skin. “Right after they shed they would be really beautiful. The colors would be more intense,” he says.

Red Spitting Cobra (Naja pallida). Dangerous to humans, the red spitting cobra of East Africa grows up to four feet in length. © Mark Laita.

At each site, Laita laid a black velvet backdrop on the floor. Handlers would then guide each snake, mostly as a protective measure, and keep it on the velvet, while the photographer snapped away with an 8 by 10 view camera and a Hasselblad. “By putting it on a black background, it removes all of the variables. It makes it just about the snake,” says Laita. “If it is a red snake in the shape of a figure eight, all you have is this red swipe of color.”

Philippine Pit Viper (Trimeresurus flavomaculatus). This two-foot long, venomous snake is found near water in the forests of the Philippines where it eats frogs and lizards. © Mark Laita.

Mexican Black Kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula nigritus). This North American constrictor can grow up to six feet in length. © Mark Laita.

King Cobra (Ophiophagus hannah). The massive king cobra, found in the forests of southern and southeastern Asia, can grow up to 18 feet. © Mark Laita.

Royal Python (Python regius). Nestling its eggs, this snake, also known as a ball python, is the same species as the albino constrictor, shown further above. © Mark Laita.

He had a brush with this fear when photographing a king cobra, the longest venomous snake in the world, which measures up to 18 feet. “It is kind of like having a lion in the room, or a gorilla,” says Laita. “It could tear apart the room in second flats if it wanted to.” Although Laita photographed the cobra while it was enclosed in a plexiglass box, during the shoot it “got away from us,” he says. It escaped behind some cabinets at the Florida facility, “and we couldn’t find it for awhile.”

A black mamba (Dendroaspis polylepis) biting Laita’s calf. The photographer told Richard Conniff that he wore shorts as opposed to pants because the swishing of his pants might have startled the snake and handlers advised him that there is nothing worse than having a snake slither up a pant leg. © Mark Laita.

He’s also had a close encounter with a deadly black mamba while photographing one at a facility in Central America. “It was a very docile snake,” he recalls. “It just happened to move close to my feet at some point. The handler brought his hook in to move the snake, and he inadvertently snagged the cord from my camera. That scared the snake, and then it struck where it was warm. That happened to be the artery in my calf.” Smithsonian contributing writer Richard Conniff shares more gory details on his blog, Strange Behaviors. Apparently, blood was just gushing from the bite (“His sock was soaked and his sneaker was filled with blood,” writes Conniff), and the photographer said the swollen fang marks “hurt like hell that night.”

Obviously, Laita lived to tell the tale. “It was either a ‘dry bite,’ which is rare, or I bled so heavily that the blood pushed the venom out,” he explained in a publicity interview. “All I know is I was unlucky to be bitten, lucky to have survived, and lucky again to have unknowingly snapped a photo of the actual bite!”

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Male Paraphidippus aurantius (a species of jumping spider), by Thomas Shahan

Thomas Shahan came eye to eye with a jumping spider in his backyard about seven years ago when he was living and attending high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Since that first encounter, he has been “smitten,” according to a December 2011 spread of his macrophotography in National Geographic. “I began learning about their names and their ways, then looking for them in local parks and reserves like the Oxley Nature Center,” he wrote in the magazine.

Holcocephala fusca (robber fly), by Thomas Shahan

For the past seven years, Shahan has developed a hobby of photographing arthropods—insects, such as robber flies and horse flies, and spiders—in his native Oklahoma. He captures their eyes and hairs in such colorful and glistening detail that his images, shared on Flickr, have been featured in Popular Photography, National Geographic and on NBC’s Today Show. (In fact, if you look up “jumping spider” on Wikipedia, you’ll even see, at the top of the page, a close-up of an adult male Phidippus audax jumping spider taken by Shahan.)

Thomas Shahan in action. Photo by Sam Martin.

“I photograph arthropods because I love them and I want others to love them as well,” Shahan explained to me in an email. “I find them compelling. They are complex, fascinating and diverse animals that are all too often overlooked and unappreciated.”

Shahan prefers to shoot his subjects in their natural environs. “Now that I know where they are—their silhouettes are often visible through the leaves they perch upon—I can spot them quickly,” he wrote in National Geographic. Only occasionally does he bring his bugs indoors to stage them on a coffee table or other surface. Either way, “My subjects are always returned to where they are found and fed for their services if at all possible,” he told me.

Shahan’s ability to clearly capture individual spines on the legs of teensy-weensy spiders (jumping spiders measure anywhere from one to 22 millimeters in length) and the metallic sheen of their eyes might suggest that he uses fancy, top-of-the-line equipment. But, the photographer actually takes a do-it-yourself approach. “You can do a lot with a little,” says the 2011 graduate of University of Oklahoma, in printmaking, on his personal Web site. Currently, he uses a modestly priced Pentax DSLR camera with a set of modified extension tubes, a reversed 50-millimeter prime lens (a garage sale find!) and a diffused (and duct taped) homemade flash for lighting.

Habronattus cognatus (a species of jumping spider), by Thomas Shahan

The macrophotographer is especially interested in the eyes of arthropods—and it’s the creatures’ eyes that attract the attention of viewers. To look into the face of creatures as small as a 4-millimeter jumping spider and “see yourself reflected in their large glossy eyes is incredibly humbling. To know they’ve evolved relatively little in millions of years is absolutely fascinating to me too; they’ve had those wonderful eyes for a long, long time,” said Shahan in an email. ”Additionally, from a photographic standpoint, the arthropod portraiture anthropomorphizes them considerably. To get down low and look up into their faces and eyes changes our usual perspective and has a propagandistic quality to it making them seem more important and powerful than us.”

Tabanus species (horse fly), by Thomas Shahan

In changing our visual perspective, Shahan ultimately wants to change our general feelings about bugs. ”I want to turn revulsion to reverence,” he said. “Arthropods are amazing animals and a good first step to appreciating and loving them is to simply take a closer look.”

“Beautiful Beasts: The Unseen Life of Oklahoma Spiders and Insects,” featuring 12 of Shahan’s photographs as well as the video, shown above, is on display at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History through September 8, 2013.

Courtesy of the Water Tank Project.

This New Year’s Eve, in addition to the typical resolutions to exercise more or spend more time with family, consider resolving to take better advantage of the cultural offerings of America’s cities and towns. Whether you seek to attend concerts, listen to lectures by authors and visiting scholars or become regulars at area museums, a few exhibitions slated for 2013 on the intersection of art and science will be must-sees in the New Year.

The Water Tank Project

Courtesy of the Water Tank Project.

The skyline of New York City will be transformed next summer when 300 water tanks in the five boroughs become public works of art, calling attention to water conservation. Artists, including Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha, Catherine Opie, Lawrence Weiner, and even Jay-Z, have agreed to participate in the project. Their original designs will be printed on vinyl, which will be wrapped around the mostly wood tanks, which typically measure 12 feet high and 13 feet in diameter, perched on top of buildings. The art will be a welcome addition to the city’s rooftops, while also providing more awareness of the global water crisis.

Teaching the Body: Artistic Anatomy in the American Academy, From Copley, Eakins, and Rimmer to Contemporary Artists

Female torso, by Lisa Nilsson. Photo by John Polak.

Naomi Slipp, a PhD candidate in art history at Boston University, is organizing an ambitious exhibition of more than 80 sketches, models, prints, books, paintings and other works that tell a full story of artistic renderings of human anatomy in America. On display at the Boston University Art Gallery at the Stone Gallery, from January 31 to March 31, the exhibition spans two and half centuries, from the very first anatomy text by painter John Singleton Copley, dating to 1756, to works by contemporary artists, such as Lisa Nilsson, who creates paper sculptures depicting cross sections of the human body. ”This exhibition examines both what that study of artistic anatomy meant for these artists and for the way we, today, think about our own bodies and how they work,” said Slipp, in her successful bid to raise funds for the project on Kickstarter. ”In looking at artworks created by artists and doctors, I hope to unite this diverse audience, bringing together people who are interested in art and those who are interested in medicine for a rich, shared conversation about what it means to occupy, treat and picture our own bodies.”

Portraits of Planet Ocean: The Photography of Brian Skerry

Harp seal, by Brian Skerry.

“I believe my most important role remains as artistic interpreter of all that I see. I need to understand the science, but I want to capture the poetry,” writes Brian Skerry, in his book, Ocean Soul. A National Geographic wildlife photographer with decades of experience, Skerry has captured enchanting portraits of harp seals, Atlantic bluefin tuna, hammerhead sharks, beluga whales, manatees and other creatures of the deep. His line of work requires loads of equipment—underwater housings for his cameras, strobes, lenses, wetsuits, drysuits, fins—to get the perfect shot. “While no single image can capture everything, in my own work I am most pleased when I make pictures that reveal something special about a specific animal or ecosystem, pictures that give viewers a sense of the mysterious or in effect bring them into the sea with me,” says Skerry, in a dispatch on Ocean Portal. Earlier this fall, Ocean Portal asked the public to vote for a favorite among 11 of Skerry’s photographs. The viewers’ choice and other images by the underwater photographer will be on display at D.C.’s National Museum of Natural History beginning April 5.

American Vesuvius: The Aftermath of Mount St. Helens by Frank Gohlke and Emmet Gowin

Inside Mount St. Helens Crater, Base of Lava Dome on the Left (detail), by Frank Gohlke, 1983. Courtesy of The Cleveland Museum of Art.

On May 18, 1980, stirred by a 5.1 magnitude earthquake, Mount St. Helens in Washington state’s Cascade Range erupted, forever changing the landscape surrounding it. Separate from one another, American photographers Emmet Gowin and Frank Gohlke documented the devastation (and in Gohlke’s case, the gradual rebirth) of the area. The Cleveland Museum of Art is bringing the photographers’ series together, side by side, in an exhibit, on display from January 13 to May 12.

Interestingly, the museum will also play host to “The Last Days of Pompeii: Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection,” looking at art by masters ranging from the 18th and 19th century artists Piranesi and Ingres to more modern contributions from Duchamp, Rothko and Warhol, all inspired by the deadly eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The exhibit will be on display from February 24 to May 19.

Gogo: Nature Transformed

Maine seaweed cuff, 2008. Designed by Gogo Ferguson and Hannah Sayre-Thomas. Photo by Peter Harholdt.

Gogo Ferguson and her daughter, Hannah Sayre-Thomas, live on Cumberland Island, off the coast of Georgia. Morning, noon and night, the pair walks the beach, collecting interesting skeletons, seaweed and seashells brought in by the tide. “Nature has perfected her designs over millions of years,” writes Ferguson, on her Web site. And so, the artist incorporates these organic designs into jewelry, sculptures and housewares. Her first museum exhibition, at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta from January 19 to July 7, features more than 60 works, including a six-foot by eight-foot wall sculpture modeled after seaweed from New England and an ottoman fashioned after a sea urchin.

View of the solar corona and magnetic loops during an eclipse of the Sun by the Earth. Solar Dynamics Observatory, April 2, 2011. Credit: NASA GSFC/Michael Benson/Kinetikon Pictures.

Michael Benson

Photographer Michael Benson takes raw images collected on NASA and European Space Agency missions and enhances them digitally. The results are brilliant, colorful views of dust storms on Mars and Saturn’s rings, among other sights. The American Association for the Advancement of Science Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. will be exhibiting images from Planetfall, Benson’s latest book, as well as his other titles, including Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle (2009) and Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes (2003), from mid-February through the end of April.

Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence

(Left) Firefly signals captured in slow-shutter speed photos. © Tsuneaki Hiramatsu. (Right) A re-creation of New Zealand’s Waitomo cave system, with sticky “fishing lines” dropped from the ceiling by glowworms. © AMNH\D. Finnin.

If you missed it at New York’s American Museum of Natural History this past year, there is still time to see “Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence” at its next stop, Chicago’s Field Museum, from March 7 to September 8. The exhibition highlights the diversity of animals, from fireflies and glowworms to jellyfish and fluorescent corals found upwards of a half-mile deep in the ocean, that use bioluminescence, and the variety of different reasons for which they do. A firefly, for instance, glows to catch the attention of a mate. An anglerfish, meanwhile, attracts prey with a bioluminescent lure dangling in front of its mouth; a vampire squid releases a cloud of bioluminescence to befuddle its predators. The show also explains the chemical reaction that causes the animals to glow. “The one real weakness,” wrote the New York Times, at the opening of the exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History, “is that with only a few exceptions—like the tanks of blinking ‘splitfin flashlight fish’ found in deep reefs of the South Pacific—this is not an exhibition of specimens but of simulations.”

Nimbus II. © Berndnaut Smilde.

While we would all love to control the weather most days, no mere mortal has succeeded in this endeavor. Berndnaut Smilde, however, seems to have the magic touch. Hailing from Groningen, a northern city in the Netherlands (a country well acquainted with clouds and rain), Smilde uses a very precise science to create nimbus clouds indoors; he then photographs the fleeting moment that each cloud is suspended in air.

Nimbus clouds are clouds that produce precipitation, characterized as well for their low altitude and great volume. Smilde certainly manages low altitude; he conjures his faux clouds under a roof, after all. But, fortunately for his venues, no rain falls from the short-lived clouds.

Nimbus Cukurcuma Hamam II. © Berndnaut Smilde.

Smilde’s experiments started in a small exhibition gallery called Probe in the Dutch city of Arnhem in 2010. This year, he graduated to larger spaces, including a 15th-century church and an old castle. While he has no science background, Smilde uses an artist’s fascination to create something entirely new.

“Some things you just want to question for yourself and see if they can be done,” Smilde writes in an email. “I imagined walking in a museum hall with just empty walls. There was nothing to see except for a rain cloud hanging around in the room.”

Nimbus. © Berndnaut Smilde.

The artist, who now lives and works in Amsterdam, has always been fascinated by the impressive skies in Old Dutch seascape paintings. “My grandparents had one with really threatening-looking clouds. I remember I was intrigued by the power of it. I couldn’t really grasp what it was, but there was something big, magical and dark about to happen in that painting,” writes Smilde. “I wanted to create the idea of a typical Dutch rain cloud inside a space.”

But conceiving the idea and making it happen are two very different things. Smilde did lots of research on clouds and in doing so stumbled upon a substance called aerogel. Also known as ”frozen smoke,” aerogel is made up of 99.8 percent air, making it the lightest solid material on Earth. Intrigued by its resemblance to clouds, Smilde started experimenting with this smoke. “By trying and testing different methods with temperature controllers and moisture I got the hang of it. It’s not really a high-tech process. I make the clouds using a combination of smoke, moisture and the right backlighting,” says Smilde. “I can adapt and control the setting, but the clouds will be different every time.”

Nimbus Minerva. © Berndnaut Smilde.

Smilde’s indoor clouds are marvelous—so much so that Time magazine declared them one of the best inventions of 2012.

Since his masterpieces only stick around for a few seconds, it is rare to be a witness. Smilde has created clouds for public audiences just three times. The artist admits that while it is nice to recreate it for a group, his main focus is on photographing the cloud. His photographs, not the clouds themselves, are what end up on exhibition. “I like the photograph better, as a document of a cloud that happened on a specific location and is now gone,” he notes.

Nimbus D’Aspremont. © Berndnaut Smilde.

As a result, the location of the cloud is an important aspect, as it is the setting for his creation and part of the artwork.  In his favorite piece, Nimbus D’Aspremont, the architecture of the D’Aspremont-Lynden Castle in Rekem, Belgium, plays a significant role in the feel of the picture. “The contrast between the original castle and its former use as a military hospital and mental institution is still visible,” he writes. “You could say the spaces function as a plinth for the work.”

Smilde has referred to his indoor clouds as a visualization of bad luck. “The ominous situation is not so much represented by the shape of the cloud, but by placing it out of its natural context,” says the artist. “In this case, it’s the unnatural situation that could be threatening.”

The artist focuses on the ephemerality of his subject. “It’s there for a brief moment and the clouds fall apart,” he says. Since clouds are something that people tend to have strong connections to, there are a lot of preconceived notions and emotions tied to them. For him though, his work presents “a transitory moment of presence in a distinct location.”

Smilde’s work will be included in “The Uncanny,” a month-long show opening January 16 at the Ronchini Gallery in London. His photographs will also be featured in an exhibition at SFAC Gallery in San Francisco, from February 15 through April 27, 2013.

Beehive ginger. © Andrew Zuckerman.

With a stark white background and a splash of color, minimalist master Andrew Zuckerman has reinvented the way we look at the world around us. Known for his crisp photographs of celebrities and wildlife, Zuckerman turned his lens on the plant kingdom and captured 150 species in full bloom for his latest book Flower.

© Andrew Zuckerman.

The filmmaker/photographer culled through over 300 species—even visiting the Smithsonian Institution— to select plants both familiar and exotic. Armed with a 65 mega-pixel camera, Zuckerman’s images capture the color, texture and form of each flower and showcase them in a way never seen before. Smithsonian.com’s multimedia producer, Ryan R. Reed, recently interviewed Zuckerman to find out more about Flower and the creative process behind the images.

You’ve shot portraits of politicians, artists and endangered species. Why did you decide to turn your camera on flowers?

I am very interested in the natural world, honestly not as a scientist or from any intellectual place, but from a visual perspective. I am really interested in this precise translation of the natural world. I like photography as a recording device. It’s the best possible two-dimensional representation of 3D living things that we have.

Jimson weed. © Andrew Zuckerman.

A project like Flower suits my tendencies. I have really wanted to understand how things work my whole life and then deconstruct things. My work—these books, these projects—are about being curious about a subject. When I want to understand a subject, I decide, okay, I’m going to focus on this for a year, and I go out and I do a lot of research and I find out a lot about the subject, in this case flowers. I partner with people who have flowers in private collections, and I decide to methodically go through it.

Jade vine. © Andrew Zuckerman.

The flowers are photographed on stark white backgrounds. Why did you make this choice?

The work is not on white for an aesthetic reason. The flowers are on white because that is neutral; I sort of vacuum everything out. I find that you take a walk in nature and come upon an amazing flower, and that flower, your understanding of it, your interpretation of that experience seeing that flower, is chaotic and confused by everything around it. The weather, the green plants around it, the path you are on, a number of different variables that have very little to do with the flower are there. When I get interested in a subject, I am most interested in honing in and nailing down exactly what it is. So, in terms of a flower, I want to take it out of its context. I want to study its form.

Shaving brush tree. © Andrew Zuckerman.

I am not interested in Ted Kennedy in his office on Capitol Hill with his books and his beautiful desk and everything, his environment. I’m interested in him, his face, his expression. How do you reduce the subject down to its essential qualities, and then, furthermore, when you do a number of subjects, how do you democratize all of them so that you can see the differences between them? So that you are not seeing the differences between the white of the background or the light or anything else, but you are just seeing the subject. It seems simple, but for me it’s been a very challenging and exciting process to really find what it is that is truly essential to that singular subject, and then to see it in context of its family rather than the environment that it’s thriving in.

Darwin’s Star Orchid. © Andrew Zuckerman.

How did you select which flowers you would photograph? 

Taking the pictures is the easy part. Getting the subjects and figuring out what I want to do and what will tell the story in the most holistic way is the hard part. I am a big book collector. I love books. For a long time, every time I saw books on flowers, I had just been buying them. I had been tagging pages of flowers.

Darwin’s star orchid, for instance, is not a particularly pretty flower. It’s not even a particularly interesting-looking flower, but the narrative of it is fascinating. It was totally instrumental in Darwin’s formulation of the theory of evolution. There is this 11-inch spur that is coming off of its blossom from the bottom, and he thought there has to be this insect with some kind of an appendage long enough to pollinate it. No one believed him, but 40 years later entomologists discovered this moth with a tongue that is four times longer than its body. It was the one insect that could unfurl its tongue, get all the way to the bottom past that spur and pollinate the flower.

Purple passionflower. © Andrew Zuckerman.

Then, there is the purple passionflower, which is an incredibly beautiful, vibrant, flamboyant flower, but its narrative qualities are not that interesting to me. So, there were different reasons for different flowers. I wanted to touch on different types of flowers—medicinals, orchids, roses and other groups. For the most part, I have like a hit list, a real wish list, and I have been very fortunate to work with some serious, smart and efficient people here at the studio, who would be calling institutions and private collections and organizing when the perfect date was for a flower to be photographed. Getting an extraordinary place like the Smithsonian to allow me to just roll in and set up a studio in their greenhouses and have the pick of the place is an incredibly lucky thing.

Dahlia. © Andrew Zuckerman.

Can you describe the setup for each flower and the techniques that you used?

It’s a numbers game; take as many shots as I can, and I’m going to get the one that I respond to most. Artists, especially, have anxiety…what is my vision? What is me, or is the thing I just did actually an expression of what I have seen? The work that I feel is most authentically mine is the one that is my first reaction, the first thing that feels like the truth. In aggregate, those choices, those series of decisions, create your point of view, your visual language. With Flower, I was searching for that project that I would not have to justify intellectually or think about in any way. That’s what was fun about it.

Cannonball tree. © Andrew Zuckerman.

My set up is very simple. I’ve been doing my lighting and photographing things the exact same way for a very long time. [Robert] Mapplethorpe contextualized flowers. Georgia O’Keeffe contextualized them. They’ve often been metaphors for something of the human condition. I was just interested in the flower; I wasn’t interested in the flower standing in for something else. And so, there’s a reason there are no shadows or romance in my work. I don’t place myself onto the image. I actually try to get myself out of the work so that one doesn’t look at the work and go “wow, that’s an amazing picture” but that someone looks at it and says “wow, that’s an incredible flower.” I’m sort of a conduit to get the information from the natural world to the viewer. The choices made in composition are purely instinctual, and I try to never go, is that right? I think, okay, I put it there, that feels right. As soon as it feels right, I move on; it’s very quick actually.

You produced videos in conjunction with the book. Can you talk about these?

I’d say a majority of my time is spent film making, not photographing, and every single project I’ve done has had a strong film component to it. I’m very interested in multiple entry points; I like houses with lots of doors. When I do a project, I like the idea that someone is going to experience the book, someone is going to experience the film, someone else is going to experience a framed photo on a wall, but they are all going to get to the same root thing as long as all of those mediums are exploring it from the same place.

Giant chincherinchee. © Andrew Zuckerman.

It was just kind of fun. There’s this long history of time-lapse filmmaking of flowers, and I get especially excited about and challenged by exhausted subjects and mediums. I look at the time-lapse film and I go, is there anything else we can do with this? Is there anything that hasn’t been done yet? Can we breathe life into this? Because it’s not the subject we’re tired of, it’s the execution. So, is there another way to execute this?

I had the flowers around the clock in my studio for a couple of weeks at a time. I would take a singular photograph every five minutes, and then my friend Jesse Carmichael, who was a founder of Maroon Five, made this really interesting score.

Claire Tinsley, Smithsonian.com’s production intern, assisted in the production of this Q&A.

Courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Given the growing public interest in artsy science and sciency art, I like to think these gifts are sure to impress your friends and family this holiday season!

For the movie buff:

If there is a participating theater near you, grab tickets and take a movie-loving friend or family member to see the documentary Chasing Ice. Inspired by a trip to Iceland in 2005, photographer James Balog embarked on a massive project called the Extreme Ice Survey. He deployed time-lapse cameras across the Arctic as a means of gathering visual evidence of climate change. “His hauntingly beautiful videos compress years into seconds and capture ancient mountains of ice in motion as they disappear at a breathtaking rate,” says the movie’s Web site. Outside Magazine says Chasing Ice “should be required viewing for every policymaker on earth.”

For the athlete:

Muscle leggings by Black Milk. Courtesy of Flickr user Brett Jordan.

Unfortunately, the women’s running tights that Nike released in mid-October, boldly decorated with X-ray images of bones, flew off the shelves and are currently out of stock. The company described the spandex leggings as giving a glimpse into the wearer’s “inner toughness,” and, boy—or shall I say, girl!—they were fierce. But, if you have an athlete on your list who’d be willing to make equally as bold and scientific a fashion statement, consider these muscle leggings from the Australian clothing brand Black Milk.

Rorshock in Color

For the game nut:

Some families (mine) are into games, while others (my husband’s) cringe at the mention of them. If yours is the former, think about bringing the boardgame, Rorshöck in Color, to your holiday gathering. Loosely based on the ideas of Swiss pyschoanalyst Hermann Rorschach, who designed his “Rorschach test” on the premise that much about an individual’s personality could be deduced by what he or she sees within a set of inkblots, the game comes with 20 cards, each with a different inkblot painting. When one player responds with what they see in a given inkblot, another refers to a handy book of diagnoses. “Don’t worry, you haven’t lost your mind: The diagnoses here are funny, cheeky and downright irreverent,” claims the game’s manufacturer. As the tagline says, Rorshöck in Color is “a game for colorful personalities.” (Recommended for ages 15 and up)

For the art collector:

DNA portraits, shown here, are reminiscent of barcodes. Courtesy of DNA 11.

One of the very first posts I wrote for Collage of Arts and Sciences was about a clever company called DNA 11. Since 2005, founders Adrian Salamunovic and Nazim Ahmed have filled orders placed by people around the world wanting their very own (and sometimes even their dogs’) DNA portraits. The customer swabs his inner cheek and then rubs that foam swab onto a paper card, which DNA 11 provides in a DNA collection kit. Once the company receives the sample, technicians in DNA 11′s genetics lab—the very first of its kind devoted solely to art making—isolate specific DNA sequences and create a unique digital image–a pattern of highlighted bands–that is then printed on a canvas. For the artist or art collector on your list, DNA 11 offers a gift kit. The kit includes all the materials a recipient would need to collect his or her DNA sample and submit it for a custom portrait.

America’s Other Audubon. Princeton Architectural Press, 2012.

For the bookworm:

America’s Other Audubon, published this past May by Princeton Architectural Press, is an incredible book for anyone interested in scientific illustration. To most, John James Audubon is a familiar name, but author Joy M. Kiser tells the story of Genevieve Jones, an illustrator whose artistry and scientific accuracy rivaled Audubon’s and yet history forgot. In the 1880s, Jones and her family published 90 copies of her masterpiece, Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Ohio. Today, only 34 of those 90 originals are known to exist. (The Smithsonian Institution Libraries is lucky enough to have two.) Yet, in America’s Other Audubon, Kiser brings Jones’ story and her detailed illustrations of delicate birds’ nests and dappled eggs to the public for the very first time.

For the shutterbug:

The blood-brain barrier in a live zebrafish embryo. Image by Dr. Jennifer L. Peters and Dr. Michael R. Taylor.

Introduce someone near and dear to the fascinating world of photomicrography. For 38 years, Nikon has hosted an annual “Small World” competition where skilled researchers submit photographs captured through a light microscope. This year’s top winners, depicting everything from a zebrafish embryo to coral sand, and the retina of a fruit fly to a close-up of garlic, are featured in a 2013 calendar.

Sun print. Courtesy of Flickr user .scribe.

For the crafty kid:

A fun way to teach a child about the beauty of nature is through sun printing. Using a SunPrint kit, one can put leaves, flowers and other objects on chemically-treated solar paper and place the composition to the sun. In a matter of minutes, the areas exposed to sunlight are blue whereas the areas blocked by the objects are white. The design can be preserved by dipping the paper in water and allowing it to dry. Once your child has mastered sun printing on paper, she or he can apply the technique to fabrics. Light-sensitive cotton, silk, t-shirts and scarves can be purchased at www.bluesunprints.com.

Periodic Table of Heavy Metals by Pop Chat Labs

For the nephew or niece who eats and sleeps with Beats headphones on:

Pop Chart Lab, a Brooklyn-based company founded by Patrick Mulligan, a book editor, and Ben Gibson, a graphic designer, has made it its mission “to render all of human experience in chart form.” Music is no exception. Check out the Periodic Table of Heavy Metals print and the Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names, which takes an almost scientific approach to linking all the Lils, Bigs, Daddys, Masters and Doctors populating the genre’s history.

Ornament by Artologica

And, last but not least, for a party’s host or hostess:

A petri dish ornament! Artist Michele Banks watercolors—resembling bacteria-laden agar—are actually quite beautiful.

See More Holiday Gift Guides from Smithsonian.com »

The cube was submerged in Tennessee’s Duck River. © David Liittschwager.

When one sets out to document the diversity of life on Earth, there’s a real advantage to limiting the sample size.

“I thought one cubic foot would be manageable,” says David Liittschwager, sitting behind the wide, unadorned work table that fills the dining room of his San Francisco flat. Framed images of some of the thousands of animals and plants he’s photographed during the past 25 years hang on the walls. “A cubic foot fits in your lap; you can put your arms around it. If you stand with both feet together and look down, it’s just about the size of your footprint while standing still,” he says. “I thought it was something I could actually get through, and finish.”

Common Name: River Cooter, Scientific Name: Pseudemys concinna, 4″ across carapace, Location: Lillard’s Mill, Duck River, Milltown, Tennessee. © David Liittschwager.

For the past five years, Liittschwager—a quiet perfectionist who served as an assistant to both Richard Avedon and Mary Ellen Mark, and now works with both the Smithsonian and National Geographic—traveled the world with a three-dimensional stainless steel frame, exactly one cubic foot in volume.

His notion was simple and thrilling: to place the lattice in some of the planet’s richest ecosystems and see how many organisms occupy or pass through that relatively small (if you’re a squirrel) or huge (if you’re a diatom) parcel of real estate in 24 hours.

The numbers turned out to be pretty big.

The six locations Liittschwager chose were a bucket list of dream journeys; from a coral reef in Moorea, French Polynesia, to a fig branch high in the cloud forest of Costa Rica. The cube was submerged in Tennessee’s Duck River (“the most biologically diverse river in the United States,” Liittschwager assures me) and a nature sanctuary in Manhattan’s Central Park. The fifth stop was a burnt patch of fynbos (shrub land) in Table Mountain National Park, in South Africa. Finally, the well-traveled cube returned home to dredge the currents beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.

In each case, Liittschwager and his teams encountered myriad beings—from about 530 in the cloud forest to more than 9,000 in every cubic foot of the San Francisco Bay.

Liittschwager’s new book, A World in One Cubic Foot. Courtesy of University of Chicago Press.

The results appear in Liittschwager’s new book, A World in One Cubic Foot: Portraits of Biodiversity (University of Chicago Press). Like his previous works—which include Witness: Endangered Species of North America (1994) and Skulls (2002)—these images are frank, revealing and unassumingly poetic. Printed on plain white backgrounds, the animal portraits recall Avedon’s “In the American West” series, which Liittschwager helped print in the mid-1980s.

Liittschwager placed a cube in the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, a four-acre preserve in Manhattan’s Central Park. © David Liittschwager.

One surprise is how odd and tiny so many of the creatures turn out to be. “Most of the world’s biodiversity is small, cryptic things,” Liittschwager confirms. “Things that hide in cracks and underneath and on the backside of the things that we see.”

Lots of people photograph plants and animals. But no one does it more painstakingly, or with greater compassion, than Liittschwager. His gift is instantly apparent. Though dozens of the creatures documented in A World in One Cubic Foot are totally foreign to our experience, Liittschwager creates an intimacy that you feel in your gut.

Common Name: Eastern Gray Squirrel, Scientific Name: Sciurus carolinensis, Size: 7.09″ body length, Location: Hallett Nature Sanctuary, Central Park, New York. © David Liittschwager.

“I don’t find myself, or a deer, any more magnificently made than a beetle or a shrimp,” says the photographer. His work supports the claim. One can’t look at these images without being in awe of these creatures, and feeling empathy for their well being. Liittschwager reveals his subjects’ innate nobility—whether it’s a bush tanager from Costa Rica, a Polynesian squat lobster or a Central Park midge.

The photographer also monitored a cubic foot in the fynbos (shrub land) in South Africa’s Table Mountain National Park. © David Liittschwager.

“Does it take more patience,” I ask, “to photograph animals than it did to photograph people with Avedon?”

“It does,” Liittschwager nods. “The work Richard did in portraiture did not take very long. He would see somebody that he wanted to photograph, and then it could be a five- to ten-minute session in front of a simple background. To chase a running insect around a petri dish for an hour, trying to get it in the frame and in focus, is not uncommon.”

Any project that blends art and science will involve some guesswork and—well—“unnatural” selection. The Central Park chapter includes a portrait of a raccoon. “It was sleeping on the tree, right above us,” says Liittschwager. “We didn’t actually see the raccoon, but one day the cube had been moved—and the raccoon was the only thing big enough to do it!”

Common Name: Jewel Scarab, Scientific Name: Chrysina resplendens, Size: 3.1 cm body length, Location: Monteverde Cloud Forest Biological Reserve, Costa Rica. © David Liittschwager.

Likewise the jewel scarab: an aptly-named Costa Rican beetle. “They’re really strong fliers but kind of clumsy,” notes Liittschwager. “This guy was just flying along in the cloud forest canopy, 90 feet up in a tree. He whacked into my head—and fell into the cube.”

Right now Liittschwager is in Belize, working with the Smithsonian on a related art/science exhibition about these “biocubes.” It’s slated to open in 2014 at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. “We’re working together to digitize diversity, one cube at a time,” says research zoologist Chris Meyer, who has been collaborating with Liittschwager for about four years. “David gets the shot, and I get a genetic fingerprint for each species. So while David puts ‘faces to names,’ my job is to put ‘names to faces.’ ”

So what’s the take-away lesson from a work like this?

“That even small spots matter,” Liittschwager says without hesitation. “And that there is no small spot that’s not connected to the place right next to it. There’s nothing that’s separate.”

The photographer’s view is reflected in the book’s six essays—one for each biosphere—and in the foreword by E.O. Wilson. In his own introduction, Liittschawager quotes Wilson: “A lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a single tree.”

Which makes it, Liittschwager observes, too big a sample size.

Guest blogger Jeff Greenwald is a frequent contributor to Smithsonian.com.