Microscope Photographs
“I initially got my microscope because I saw makeup artists using similar ones in YouTube videos, and I thought it would be something fun to try out. Once I started using the microscope, I realized just how amazing the world we see but don’t see is. These are things we have seen before or looked at every day, but we simply don’t realize what’s below the surface level. To me, it’s similar to thinking that you know a person pretty well, but then discovering something totally new about them that you never expected.”
“I’ve found that oftentimes it’s the things I don’t expect to photograph well that end up producing the best images. This realization has helped me keep an open and broad mindset when thinking of new things to photograph. For example, I’ve also done a series of people’s eyes magnified up close. The detail inside the iris of an eye is absolutely beautiful and unexpected. I had a friend who thought their eyes would be boring because they are brown, but they actually had light brown striations throughout that looked like tiger stripes.”
“Most of my microscopic pictures involve nature. I think the bright colors lend themselves really well to taking very vibrant photos. I’ve recently started experimenting with putting contrasting backgrounds behind the things that I’m photographing as well. For example, the picture of the little white flowers with the dark purple one in the corner was taken on top of a black colored book. I like creating that kind of opposition in my images. That picture is of a Queen Anne’s Lace flower, and it’s actually my favorite photo in the bunch. I particularly like it because of that single purple flower in the corner. I had never seen a Queen Anne’s Lace like this before, and in my head, I call this photo “The Outsider”.”
About the Creator
Anna Graeff is an M2 at Carver College of Medicine with an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Iowa State University. She has two adorable pet Yorkies, which distract her from studying a lot of the time. She loves art and became interested in creating her own over the past year. Her favorite medium to create is embroidery.
