Maria Ferreira, a student at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), uses microscopy at RISD’s Nature Lab to micro-image crystal formations underneath a polarizing filter using an inverted microscope and a variety of concentration solutions. The results are intricately patterned and sometimes kaleidoscopic. “The atomic orderliness of crystals is a rather astonishing fact of nature,” Ferreria writes. “That’s why the forms in these images appear to be so perfect, as if they were computer generated. Polarized light transforms a seemingly dull crystalline mass into a prismatic landscape. Iridescent waves, geometrical gardens, and spiraling sand dunes reveal textured maps of their microscopic structures — each slide containing a vast wilderness to explore.”