This beautiful moment was captured on Navajo land in Arizona. With permission from the Native Americans, I visited their sacred and amazing canyons. It's a bit windy topside so there is a constant shower of sand pouring in. In just a few minutes, piles of this ultra-fine sand begin to build up on our shoulders, pockets, and equipment making the day-long adventure quite memorable. When the sun is at its highest point, it illuminates this sand shower and produces magnificent beams of light.

appearing as a beautiful iridescent wing from a magical creature, this is actually a small portion of a single grain of black sand. we were exploring a small clump of sand for a good shot, and noticed a tiny colourful spot sparkling out from one of the grains of lava rock. zooming in much more, we discovered this 'wing' shape measuring 0.0058 inches long (equivalent to the thickness of a sheet of paper). the entire grain of sand at this level of magnification, would fill 20 of these photos.

the amazing colours and complex patterns hosted by a lovely peacock

passing for an assortment of freshly mined diamonds, these rough 'gems' are actually grains of refined sugar. they are spilled upon a deep-blue CD case which gave us a nice colour backdrop and texture. the crystalline grains of sugar average around 1/60 of an inch.

this is a super closeup photo of a fallen lily petal. to the naked eye, the petal appears a pale plum colour, but when zoomed in with a bunch of light, we discovered that this flower was mostly white and only had colour running through these vein-like areas. the once juicy cells are drying out which is causing the puckers & wrinkles in the clear/white areas. the coloured 'veins' measure about 0.00042 inches in diameter (a tad thinner than kitchen plastic wrap).

apologizing in advance for those with allergies... here's a whole cluster of pollen spores. each one measures about 0.006 inches across, so this entire grouping is equivalent to the thickness of a DVD. the photographed colour was enhanced from pale tones.