Macro

Motion artist Thomas Blanchard’s colorful short film envisions an entire universe that lives inside of our eyes. What makes the vibrant visuals even more amazing is that they were entirely created with paint, ink, oil, and soap, without reliance on CGI or digital effects.

What you’re looking at might look like some kind of digitally-created imagery, but artist Rus Khasanov’s fascinating rainbow gradients were actually created by subjecting old CDs and DVDs to a variety of torture, and capturing the destruction under a macro lens. More here.

Martin Kristiansen of My Microscopic World used a polarized light source, a lab microscope, and an iPhone to capture these incredibly detailed, colorful, and otherworldly images of insect larvae, isopods, and tiny crustaceans. Check out more amazing close-up images on his Instagram feed.

Nature photographer Lothar Lenz captured this incredible macro slow-motion video of hornets in motion, as they fly around, sip water, and live their lives near his home in the Eifel region of Germany. The crystal clear sounds of the buzzing insects are especially immersive with headphones on.

This new channel is a collaboration by SciShow host Hank Green, musician Andrew Huang, and microorganism enthusiast James Weiss. It delves deep into the world of the trillions of microscopic organisms that surround us. We recommend starting off with Meet the Microcosmos for a primer to this fascinating universe.

Rus Khasanov’s experimental short film features vivid and colorful imagery created by shooting macro images of blobs of specially-formulated paints colliding to create new and larger formations, which are at times reminiscent of celestial bodies. Music by Dmitry Evgrafov.

CG artist pedro3dbh’s short film sends us on an epic journey deep within the most mundane of objects, the tip of an ordinary ball-point pen. As the virtual camera zooms deeper and deeper into its structure, we eventually reach the subatomic level.

Macrophotography experts Beauty of Science captured incredible close-up footage of the interactions between water, ice, vinegar, and other substances to demonstrate endothermic processes in front of a high-resolution thermal camera. If you haven’t seen Getting Hot, it’s worth a watch too.

Have you ever wondered what happens to a pill once you swallow it? In this video from photographer Ben Ouaniche of Macro Room, we get an incredible close-up look at medications as they dissolve in a bath of water. It appears the imagery was sped up for added effect.

Photographer Roman De Giuli is an expert at shooting macro images of colorful fluids for artistic effect. Most of his clips feature multiple shots, but this one is simply a 3-minute video of a single fluid, working all on its own to create visual magic. We know you don’t have an 8K display, so just watch at the highest resolution you can.

Macro photography series Beautiful Chemistry presents an up-close look at the formation and behavior of bubbles, with different chemical solutions and electrical charges producing some very different volumes, sizes, and arrangements of the air-filled orbs. The accompanying soundtrack is wonderfully soothing.

Artist Roman De Giuli captured this incredibly vibrant and sharp short film using paints, fluids, pigments, and sparkly bits poured onto paper. Shot with an 8K camera for extra detail, and enhanced with HDR if your display supports it. It’s amazing how much the images look like galaxies.

Macro Room set up various objects and vessels filled with water or paint on a platform and then dropped spheres, pins and balloons on them. They captured the resulting explosions with a slow-mo camera that spun around its edge, creating CGI-like visuals.

Filmmaker Jan van Ijken captured this amazing microscopic scale time-lapse footage of the development of an amphibious alpine newt. Watch in awe as it grows from a single cell to a complete organism in just 6 minutes. More here.

Warped Perception takes an up-close look at a highly critical, but underappreciated element of every rocket launch – the igniters which get the rocket fuel going. The result is some truly stunning slow-motion macro footage. Watch in 4K if you can.

Gavin and Dan of The Slow Mo Guys turn their attention inwards, capturing detailed macro footage that shows how the pupil of a human eye reacts to light. Gav used one of those unique Laowa macro probe lenses to get right up to Dan’s peepers.

Artist Thomas Blanchard provides a tempting video for coffee drinkers, with a series of macro visual compositions filled with the colors of coffee and cream. Now before you dream of drinking it all up, there’s also a bit of oil and paint mixed in for effect.

Macro Room calls this video “Everyday Objects From Inside”, but it’s more of a continuation of their Everyday Objects in Macro. Except this time, all of the shots are zooming out from impossibly tight angles. We’d really love to know how they did it.

Photographer ZALUSKArt captured these impressively detailed time-lapse macro shots of ice crystals forming along the surface of soap bubbles as they’re frozen. Since each crystal is unique, every bubble is a one-of-a-kind, yet temporary work of art. More here.

Motion designer Harrison Vincent’s short film features eye-popping close-up imagery inspired by macrophotography, but was created entirely with computer graphics. The breakdown video is just as fascinating. He also provided the Cinema4D source files for download.

Waterballet creates incredible slow-motion macro videos using colored inks and water, along with ambient musical tracks to accompany the mesmerizing footage. The scenes look like weather fronts moving in on an alien landscape. More on Vimeo.

Drew Geraci presents an eye-popping macrophotographic look at items like salt, pepper, fruits, and vegetables. He captured the 1000x magnifications using a microscope, a Sony A9 camera, and devised a tiny slider rig to smoothly move the microscope’s tray.

We’ve seen popcorn popped in slow-motion before, but that was “only” at 6,200 fps. Warped Perception captured the explosive force of heated popcorn kernels at 30,000 fps in front of the macro lens of their Phantom v2512 ultra high-speed camera.

BBC Earth show The Hunt captured crisp macro footage of hotrod ants, as they make their way through the scorching 150ºF+ Namib desert, where it’s so hot that they would die if they stopped in the sun for even a few seconds. But the extreme heat isn’t their only foe.

Artist GMUNK created this mesmerizing and relaxing video by capturing slow-mo macro footage of fluids and objects subject to vibrations, a reflection of nature’s “willful, conscious impulse” for change. The footage starting around 4:15 is especially noteworthy.

Macro Room’s latest video sees them submerging a variety of objects into a tank of water and then injecting ink, creating otherworldly images for split-seconds. The montage at the end is one of the sickest things we’ve ever seen.

Timelapse Vision used a combination of macro and time-lapse photography to give us an up-close look at what our fingertips look like when they start to sweat. It’s easy to forget that we’re looking at a human finger and not some strange alien landscape.

You’ll want to put your headphones on and go full-screen to get the most out of Stereokroma’s hypnotic video, featuring super crisp macro photography of frozen fruits and veggies being thawed, accompanied by appropriate, if not exactly realistic ASMR sound effects.

Our new favorite timewasting YouTube channel Macro Room cut vegetables, shoes and other household objects in half, then kicked things up a notch with crispy close up shots and reverse time-lapses. Made with the help of the Adaptalux and Syrp Genie.

Using multiple lenses, along with some editing trickery, the folks at Macro Room take us up close and personal with a variety of ordinary objects, then zoom out so we can see what we were actually looking at. We were so convinced that Coke bottle cap was a red bell pepper.