Our featured microscopist for November and December, 2000 is noted microscopist James E. Hayden RBP, FBCA, a freelance photomicrographer living in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. Nikon conducted the interview presented below with Mr. Hayden when he was chosen as the MicroscopyU featured microscopist.

Nikon: James Hayden, what makes a great photomicrograph?

Hayden: It can be looked at on many levels - not only as a pretty picture, but for the scientific content that is revealed in a unique way by the technique. For example, one of the photomicrographs in the image gallery is a section of mouse tongue. This section was originally stained with hematoxylin. Using darkfield, you get color differentiations that illustrate parts of the tongue you can't see with the regular brightfield approach.

Nikon: How do you select your specimens?

Hayden: Well of course, a lot of them are given to me by the doctors I work with. Many are botanical or hematoxylin- and eosin-stained specimens. The researcher might see something that looks interesting, or I might be doing some routine photomicrography and just decide to experiment with different techniques or approaches. Sometimes, it's an instantaneous thing - if I can see something with the naked eye that piques my interest, I know the specimen will be fascinating. I look for patterns. I look for familiar shapes. Then I do a little darkfield, a little Rheinberg, a little oblique illumination, and see what happens.

Nikon: Talk a little about your technique and setup.

Hayden: I use darkfield most, not only because it gives a distinctive look to images, but because many specimens, including hematoxylin- and eosin-stained sections, look completely different under darkfield. None of my micrographs have color created in a computer. All of the color comes from the techniques used, specimen thickness, density of the stain, or optical filters. My favorite "digital" technique is - literally - using my finger. The dematiaceous mold photomicrograph is an example. This mold on a root tip looks like DIC (differential interference contrast), but isn't. I used my fingers over the field diaphragm to create a shadow effect. You can also decenter the aperture diaphragm if you have the right condenser. The same thing is going on in the photomicrographs of rat and mouse seminiferous tubules. Also, composition is very important. I try to use the KISS principal that I learned studying wildlife photographs. I keep it simple, and make the subject completely fill the frame. My setup includes a Microphot FXA and a camera system I built out of standard components.

Nikon: Do you have a favorite photomicrograph?

Hayden: Yes, it's an image that took third prize in this year's Small World photomicrography contest. I find the photo beautiful and also evocative, while also delivering a lot of technical content. But my favorite photo of all is actually not a photomicrograph; it's a macrograph of arabidopsis seedlings that appeared on the cover of Nature. People see all kinds of things in there - dancers, a mother and child, ice skaters - but it is also a precise document that proves the existence of a blue light photoreceptor in this plant - a feature that had never been proven to exist before.

Nikon: You've made a living merging your love of science and photography. How have you done it?

Hayden: After college, I found a job as an electron microscopist in the pathology department of the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. While micrographs were getting easier and easier to capture, doing it well remained both a science and an art form. So, over time, I became the "go to" person for all the Veterinary School researchers who needed beautiful images for publication, documentation or presentation, especially with their light microscopes. I started doing photomicrography for them in my spare time, and it eventually grew into a business that now involves researchers and other clients in the Philadelphia area and throughout the country. I didn't create this career path consciously, it just evolved over time, and I'd encourage anyone who loves both biology and imaging to study it, become good at it, and know that there is a life out there doing it.

We invite you to enjoy James Hayden's keen insight into the invisible world of photography through the microscope by visiting this month's Featured Microscopist Image Gallery.