When Kate Markey, a technician in the Aquatic Diagnostic Laboratory at Roger Williams, started using the lab’s stereo microscope to capture images of scallops, oysters and other small marine creatures from the Luther H. Blount Shellfish Hatchery, little did she know that the vibrant shots she staged might land her honors in an international photo competition – and on the pages of Scientific American magazine.
Flip to Page 71 of the December 2011 issue of Scientific American, however, and that’s exactly where you’ll find her up-close photo of a bay scallop and its “eyes,” the shot that landed her honorable mention in the 2011 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition. And after two days in Washington, D.C., this week for the formal awards ceremony and the debut of an exhibit featuring a dozen of so of the 2,000-plus photo contest entries that will travel the globe for the next three years, Markey says she’s astounded by all the attention.
“What an interesting experience to sit back and watch people view the image, read the caption and realize that it’s a bay scallop they’re looking at,” Markey says of the exhibit. “People know about the scallop muscle that they eat and the shell they see on the beach, but they don’t necessarily understand that they have eyes, that they can see shadows… all that goes on inside this invertebrate animal.”
Markey, who completed a studio art minor as an undergraduate to complement her biology degree, says that microphotography is an ideal way to merge her artistic side with the science she works with every day. And it seems likely that the Olympus BioScapes competition is just the first of many more to come.
“The gears are turning to come up with something that we can photograph and enlarge and help people learn,” she says. “I’m thoroughly addicted to taking these images now!”
Want to see more of the photographs? Check out the Olympus BioScapes 2011 winners gallery. Or view the online version of the Scientific American story, “Dazzling Miniatures.”