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Thrifty Thursday: Under The Scope

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American



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Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs taken with equipment costing less than $500.

[Apple iPhone 4s - $300]

Little cellphone cameras can fit in places inaccessible to larger, professional-grade SLR gear. I slid my iPhone under a microscope to take this self-portrait, an approximation of what an insect might see when examined under the microscope. They must think they've been kidnapped by aliens.

Alex Wild is Curator of Entomology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studies the evolutionary history of ants. In 2003 he founded a photography business as an aesthetic complement to his scientific work, and his natural history photographs appear in numerous museums, books and media outlets.

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