Robert Dash

Micro Climate Change

As we humans are busy going about our lives, nature is in shock from the choices that we make. This series explores how nature responds to climate change from a micro perspective. The images promote the exquisite detail, mystery, vulnerability and power of nature.

For example, diatoms and plants make most of the oxygen on Earth. Warmer oceans make it harder for diatoms to make oxygen.

Plants take CO2 from the atomosphere (and our out-breaths) and release oxygen and water in return. All of this exchange moves through stomata on leaves, flowers, berries. As temperatures rise, these cells close, killing trees, especially in the tropics.

Images of stomata are sequenced alternately, and then randomly, to suggest a breaking of patterns and balance with the chaos of climate change.

Each image was made with a scanning electron microscope, and features natural objects scaled at several times smaller than a pinhead. Most of the images are photomontages with DSLR macro photography, to allow a surreal conversation between everyday leaves, seeds or feathers, and minute details of themselves. I created these images after completing my book, On an Acre Shy of Eternity/ Micro Landscapes at the Edge.  As a career educator, naturalist and photographer, I'm fascinated by the marriage of art and science, especially in service to environmental conservation.

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