Inner space

British photographer Stephen Gschmeissner, like many children, spent much of his youth getting messy – trawling lakes, rivers and ponds, collecting insects and anything new and of interest including stag beetles and slow-worms. Stephen, unlike many children, then went on to pursue a degree in zoology.

He remembers having an early love of natural history and always knew the career he wanted to pursue. At his first job in the anatomy department of the Royal College of Surgeons, he was introduced to all forms of microscopy and it is where he first encountered Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM).

SEM produces images by scanning microscopic samples with a high-energy beam of electrons in a vacuum – a bit like a raster scan, the rectangular pattern of image capture and reconstruction in television. As the electrons