The next time you go to the beach, your appreciation for sand will change. When something is small or insignificant it’s compared with a grain of sand; but what if we made our particles even smaller? Dr. Gary Greenberg does just this in an impressive display that blows us away – he turns these tiny grains into works of art!
Looking at the sand, you might think that it’s all just one bland brownish color, but looking at it magnified up to 300 times can be quite enchanting. When Greenberg magnified it, he was able to expose the shells and crystals’ contrasting shapes as well as reveal strange biological organisms that were previously invisible to the naked eye.
Greenberg’s grandfather had given him notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci when he was just a child, and it didn’t take long for that gift to become his greatest passion. “I would pour through these books, lying on the ground, looking at these wonderful drawings, the paintings that he had done. For me, Leonardo was the poster boy of art and science.” Greenberg said.
Greenberg is a photographer who has been using his skills to create high-definition 3D lenses. He has 18 U.S patents under his name for them. He used to be a photographer and a filmmaker until age 33. After moving to London from LA, he earned a Ph.D. in biomedical research which gave him an appreciation for biological and scientific curiosities. To document these newfound treasures of nature with his newly acquired skills as well as those used before like macro photography technologies-which is what allowed us to see this amazing footage from such close-up range.
Greenberg’s website has other magnified objects, such as flowers and food. In the late 1970s, while studying for his Ph.D., Greenberg worked on the production of “Superman: The Film” in London and helped create an opening scene that used micro-photography to show cancerous cells from inside out.
When it comes to sand, there is a drastic difference depending on where you are. The beach sand in Hawaii is most likely the subject of Dr. Greenberg’s outstanding micro-photography. When you look at the tiny pebbles in his images, they have so many remnants from different kinds of small and big tropical sea organisms. The sand on our coast will depend on temperature (depending on if it’s winter or summer), surf conditions as well as what kind of marine environment it belongs to – which means that there could be entirely new types of rocks mixed into this pile for us to find out about eventually.
Greenberg’s sand grains gallery features samples from American beaches in California, Virginia, Minnesota, and Hawaii. As well as grains from Japan, Ireland, and Bermuda. Looking at some of the grains in this photo, it’s easy to understand how they got their unique shapes. One has a round shape while others show wear from being handled and used over time which gives an interior look into what kind of life these particles may have had before coming under Greenberg’s lens
“Every grain of sand in the world is unique and beautiful when viewed through the microscope,” Dr. Greenberg said in his caption for a photo with nine different grains. He added, “If each grain of sand is so beautiful and unique, imagine how beautiful and unique each person is?” Dr. Greenberg’s microscopic world is as beautiful and delicate as the human eye but is often overlooked in our everyday lives. His mission: To show us this fascinating landscape of life we never noticed before.