Beautiful Micrographs from Rob Kessler

As shown on his website, an article at Insight Magazine (pdf but with lovely large images), Design Boom (nice scrollable images), and Faith is Torment (a nice art blog), a series of beutiful micrographic images by artist Rob Kessler (who is principally a ceramicist, though I hesitate to label him) and, of course, the scientists who initially prepared the images.

Kessler's work is to colorize the images -- he refers to them as "re-mastered using subtle washes and layers of colour," though I no clue what that means.  I assume he uses photoshop and doesn't tint negatives. The images are electron microscope images, so they are black and white digital images -- electron microscopes can't photograph in color because they do not detect photons, of course. All of the coloring is Kessler's idea of what makes them beautiful and strong images, as well as partly reflecting anticipated natural colors. The samples are "spluttered in gold" according to Kessler before being imaged.
Nonetheless, they are beautiful images, and form part of a larger body of work by Kessler. I really thought this one of the skin of a peach was striking:

And, while, we're on it, here's a video -- only 109 views when I saw it! -- of some of the same work: