These Winning Close-Up Photos Show Life That's Often Overlooked

A stalked jellyfish in the White Sea off Russia.

A klipfish sits amid mussels off the shore of South Africa.

A small octopus looks truly alien in this intimate view of the creature 300 feet beneath the ocean’s surface.

A species of Triangular Spider spotted in Brisbane, Australia won first place in the Invertebrate Portrait category.

The photographer and farmer Ben Revell spotted this worm emerging from the abdomen of a spider. It is a Gordian worm, so-called for the inextricable knots the worms appear to become.

A snail inches along a vertical blade of grass. This shot won third place in the Invertebrate Portrait category.

Slime molds producing sporangia on a rotten log in the UK.

The wing of a banded demoiselle up close, covered in water droplets.

Starlings outside a pizza place in Germany.

A flower thaws from an overnight frost in Britain.

The flowers at sunrise in Australia. A rare event of Saharan dust floating in the atmosphere gave the sunrise a reddish tint.

The winner of the Micro category was this shot of a red algae species.

A fluorescence microphotograph reveals the tubes of pollen growing in a cress’ pistil.

A species of moss that lives on rock exposures in Sweden. The capsule is just about 1 millimeter, making a truly microscopic inclusion in this list.

Drops of oil merging. This shot was the winner of the Manmade category.

A bundle of blue fishing nets on the Kent Coast of England.

This shot took third place in the Manmade category. “The images are layered and blended in the computer to create abstractions that reference contemporary art, including pointillism, colour fields, transparencies, collage, and painterly techniques,” wrote photographer Paul Gravett in a press release.

This shot was taken of a water body reflecting a distorted image of a building Canary Wharf, London.

Taken in Marmorslottet, Norway, this shot is an arresting look at the flow of water through rock formations, themselves formed by the relentless movement of the water.

A sea fan holds small inclusions of seawater, which act as lenses for the landscape and sea in the blurry background.

The beetle Aplosonyx nigriceps consumes a plant by nibbling circles on the leaves to stop the transmission of secreted toxins into the section of the leaf the beetle wishes to eat.

A beetle scuttles across a road in the forest in Italy in this blurry shot. “My aim was to have an image showing enough movement to illustrate the speed of the beetle, while illustrating the elegance of the beetle with its superb violet and turquoise colours,” said photographer Bernard Van Elegem, in a release.

Not bats, not birds, but termites are shown flying around the night sky near Cooch Behar, India, in this artful shot.

Three sprouting slime moulds look like miniature mushroom clouds on the thorn of a holly leaf.

A waxcap grows amid the early morning dew of Ebernoe Woods in England. The misty morning and dew make everything but the waxcap look white and gray, allowing the fungi’s scarlet hue to pop all the more.

A slime mold growing from a rotten fence post is frozen in ice, giving it an otherworldly look.

In this shot, a damselfly clings to a plant. The fly’s wings—tucked in along its body—make it look like an extension of the plant.

The moth’s maximum wingspan is nearly 10 inches across, and its vivid colors are on full display in this close-up shot.

This photo is the winner for the Butterflies & Dragonflies category. It shows a male Banded Demoiselle covered in dew in the morning light.

A Sahara sand viper winds past a tasty dune gecko, laying low at the bottom of this image. The photo is an intimate look at the do-or-die nature of life for creatures in the Negev desert.

This image was captured after a pond had dried up, leaving hundreds of tiny toads without sanctuary. This photographer found a couple of spunky amphibians taking refuge in the depressions left in a large dog’s toeprints.

Rest in peace, little amphibians. This image—evoking Sondheim’s Little Shop of Horrors—depicts two juvenile Spotted Salamanders decaying inside a carnivorous Northern Pitcher Plant.