SUPER-INTIMATE FLOWER PORTRAITS

OLIVER MECKES & NICOLE MECKES -- EYE OF SCIENCE

As if flowers weren’t beautiful enough… they get even better when you get a closer look. Here’s an astonishing bouquet of images.

Flowers always draw us into their magic with their colors, shapes, and scents. But these incredible images are up close and very very personal.

Photographer Oliver Meckes and biologist Nicole Ottawa formed an award-winning microscopy partnership, known as Eye of Science, with a mission to create some of the most beautiful intimate views of life. Here, they are ultra-closely focused on flowers.

They created these extreme views with the aid of a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Focused beams of electrons graze the surfaces of the flowers and create a topographic image, with intense resolution.

These recently created images gave us a whole new appreciation to the artistry of petals, pistils, stamens, stems and leaves.

The shapes take on otherworldly visions. Some flower body parts begin to resemble our own.

Things look like anything but what they are when seen up as close as this. We see tastebuds and cochlea. We see alien creatures. We see raspberries, coral, and lizard skin.

To take their shots, the team has to meticulously prepare the flowers to keep them from disintegrating in the process. After special dehydration, the flowers are immersed in alcohol before entering a carbon dioxide pressure chamber. Finally at the end of the process, each flower is coated in gold!

These images are not only stunning; they make it incredibly easy to see the reproduction of plants. Check out the pollen as it is carried from one flower to another.

The super-close-ups show each grain of pollen as its own sculptural masterpiece.

Read more about Beautiful Flowers, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact, including 10 Most Beautiful Books of Flowers Now.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Flowers in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 07.13.14. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!

PHOTO CREDITS:

1. Image: Courtesy of Eye of Science. A Valerian flower.
2. Image: Courtesy of Eye of Science. The floret of a Chamomile flower.
3. Image: Courtesy of Eye of Science. A Rapeseed flower petal.
4. Image: Courtesy of Eye of Science. A Rapeseed flower petal.
5. Image: Courtesy of Eye of Science. A Primula petal.
6. Image: Courtesy of Eye of Science. The stigma of an Arnica flower.
7. Image: Courtesy of Eye of Science. Pollen grains (grey) on the stigma (yellow) of an Arnica flower.
8. Image: Courtesy of Eye of Science.The stamens of a Hibiscus flower.
9. Image: Courtesy of Eye of Science. The anther of a small-leaved Lime flower.
10. Image: Courtesy of Eye of Science. Four grains of Lilac pollen.