After you see the micro-photography of Dr. Gary Greenberg, you will definitely have a new appreciation for sand grains the next time you go to the beach. When something is small or insignificant it is compared to a grain of sand. Dr. Greensburg has completely turned this phrase around with his magnificent photos of tiny grains of sand. They will blow you away.
Sand that is magnified up to 300 times can be quite mesmerizing. His photos are of exactly that. Normally, when you look at sand it looks bland and brownish – all the same shape and size. However, Greenberg found that by magnifying it, he was able to expose the shells’ and crystals’ contrasting shapes and rainbow of colors – as well as revealed strange biological organisms – all unnoticeable to the naked eye.
When Greenberg was a young child, his grandfather gave him notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci. His passion for art and science began the instant he opened those books. “I would pour through these books, lying on the ground, looking at these wonderful drawings, the paintings that he had done,” Greenberg said in 2008 on his YouTube channel. “For me, Leonardo was the poster boy of art and science.”
Greenberg is such a fascinating individual. Can you believe, he actually invented the high-definition 3D lenses he uses to produce his photography? He has 18 U.S. patents under his name for them! He was a photographer and a filmmaker until age 33. Then he moved from LA to London and earned a Ph.D. in biomedical research. This gave him an appreciation for biological and scientific curiosities and for the optical macro photography technologies that he would need to document. In addition to sand grains, Greenberg’s website has other magnified objects, such as flowers and food. While he was in London studying for his Ph.D., he worked on the 1977 production of “Superman: The Film.” Greenberg used the micro-photography of pancreatic cancer cells to help create the opening scene.
There is a drastic difference in the structure of the sand depending on where it’s from. The beach sands in Hawaii, where Dr. Greenberg resides, are most likely the subjects of his outstanding micro-photography. The tiny pebbles in his images have so many remnants from different kinds of tropical sea organisms big and small. The sand on the other coasts, depending on the temperature, surf conditions, and marine environment, may include an entirely different set of rocks, minerals, and organic matter.
The sand grains gallery features samples of grains from American beaches in California, Virginia, Hawaii, and Minnesota – along with grains from Japan, Ireland, and Bermuda. Some of the grains have round shapes, while others have been worn away, showing their interior. Not only does Greenberg photograph single grains, but he also combines them to compare and contrast their different styles.
Dr. Greenberg’s mission is to show the secret beauty of the microscopic landscape that makes up our everyday world. “Every grain of sand in the world is unique and beautiful when viewed through the microscope,” he wrote in the caption for a picture that has nine separate grains. “If each grain of sand is so beautiful and unique, imagine how beautiful and unique each person is?”
