Glowstick!

Ok, so I know Halloween is over, but there are still pumpkins out there, which basically means that we should still be carving them.

ESPECIALLY if we carve them into my study species, the three-spined stickleback! This pumpkin shall henceforth be known as the "glowstick." Obviously.

Here is the most amazing gourd carving I have ever witnessed, done by my friend Lauren Ackein, who's a grad student in the lab I work in. She came to the lab to do work, but instead found that the most amazing pumpkin carving tools were lying all around her (yay dissection kits!) and so clearly, this is the result. Well, after three hours of intense carving anyway.

I love these photos because I'm always a big fan of contrast but you usually can't go crazy so as not to loose detail in the extreme darks and lights - but not here! They're so graphic that the detail in the extreme darks and lights doesn't need to be seen, and the high contrast really adds to the mood. The middle two are my favorites because I love the weird lab stuff in the background - the huge Erlenmeyer flask full of brine shrimp is especially strange. I think I want to take more lab pictures, there's so much interesting stuff in there.