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LabCam user won 1st prize in 2023 Microscopy Today Micrograph Awards

May 16, 2024

Microscopy Today, Volume 31, Issue 5, September 2023, Pages 17–22, https://doi.org/10.1093/mictod/qaad068

Published:

13 September 2023

Labcam user Tommy Gunn takes on professional microscope users with their million dollar microscopes and won first prize in the 2023 Microscopy Today Micrograph Awards video category with his unique way of videotaping dynamic water flow generated by rotifer. Tommy is a legendary character in New York City who was a famous club promotor in the 80s, then he went on a series of world adventures including being a professional deep sea fisher man. He recently picked up microscopy with his son Jesse Gunn and came up with some of them most creative way to microscopy imaging with LabCam. He was able to use LabCam to capture the real-time water flow generated by rotifer and uncovered how rotifer bring food from remote parts of the habitat to its own mouth by circulating water. Congratulations Tommy!

The original idea for the Microscopy Today Micrograph Awards competition was proposed by Robert and Camille Simmons in 2017. They suggested that Microscopy Today sponsor a micrograph contest highlighting both the scientific relevance and the artistic merit of micrographs. During 2018 a set of specifications for micrograph submission software was developed, and Nestor Zaluzec produced software capable of dealing with hundreds of submitted images.

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Video 1^st Prize. Rotifer. Rotifer Stylonchia interacting with particles (dark-field light microscopy). Image by Tommy Gunn, New York, NY.

Another goal of the competition is to honor images that may not be eligible or competitive in other micrograph contests. All types of micrographs are welcome in this competition, whether they were acquired with a light microscope, electron microscope, X-ray microscope, scanning probe microscope, or some other microanalytical tool. We also note that many worthy micrographs are published in journals or magazines without a thought of entering them in a competition. By honoring published images in a separate category we hope to encourage microscopists to think about image composition and visual impact during experiment planning and in image acquisition.

The micrograph contest is also driven by image quality from a technical standpoint. Sharpness of image details is important. Imaging of three-dimensional objects with a large depth-of-field was once the exclusive domain of the scanning electron microscope. But with focus stacking software, light micrographs can be in sharp focus over a considerable depth-of-field. The judges evaluate submitted micrographs on large high-resolution monitors that can reveal lack of sharpness, as well as other image problems. We request that submitted images have both inherent sharpness and sufficient pixel density such that they could be printed in an 11″ × 14″ format suitable for hanging in an exhibition. Often image sharpness can be maintained by acquiring the micrograph at a lower magnification than might be required for research purposes. Acquisition at high pixel density is now available to most microscopists, since the cost of suitable cameras has decreased dramatically over the last two decades. An excellent micrograph with only a modest pixel density is not necessarily eliminated from the competition, but written justification would be needed for the image to be competitive.