The University of Oxford Natural History Museum (http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/) is often featured in this blog and it has recently opened a temporary exhibition called Microsculpture, consisting of a series of exquisite photographs of 22 of the museums 5 million specimens from its Hope Entomological collection.
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Photographer Levon Biss has used a microscope lens to painstakingly take 8000 photographs of different parts of each subject, each with its own lighting arrangements and then combined them to produce these remarkable images, such as this orchid cuckoo bee:
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The exhibition also includes the actual insects, which demonstrates Bliss's remarkable talent in showing the exquisite beauty of these insects.
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Such as the Jewel longhorn beetle:
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And he has shown the Mantis Fly can look like something from a science fiction nightmare:
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Even the most mundane of British insects, like the blow fly, is shown to be just as magnificent as any of the exotic ones featured in the exhibition.
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The exhibition runs until the 30th October and is highly recommended to anyone in the locality or anyone visiting Oxford.
For those not fortunate enough to be able to visit, the exhibition has it's own website: http://microsculpture.net
