Always nice to get an award for my imaging work, especially from such a distinguished organization as the Quekett Microscopical Club. I was awarded the 2025 “Barnard Certificate for Excellence in Photomicrography, Technical Category”, for my image of the diatom Pyrgodiscus armatus from a slide prepared by Michel Haak.

Quite a stunning looking (and rare) diatom from Brno, Tegl, Czech Republic. The image was taken on my modified Olympus BHB microscope, using 450nm slightly oblique illumination, and with a 63x Leitz Pl Apo NA 1.4 oil immersion lens. 145 images were stacked in Zerene (and yes I manually move the stage in between each image to build up the depth of field for the image), and I did final processing in Photoshop (mainly denoising and a little sharpening). The image above is a low resolution one, but the full sized one along with more details can be seen on my online museum (diatomimaging.com) website here.

If you are not familiar with the Quekett Microscopical Club, there’s more about them here. Founded in 1865 they are an amazing organization with over 150 years of microscopy history, and some of the most knowledgeable people I’ve met.

As always, thanks for reading, and if you’d like more information about my work I can be reached here.