A picture tells a thousand words. So I suppose a movie tells 24,000+ words per second.

Whether you use them for educating, self-study or just for your viewing pleasure, photos and movies of biological concepts and processes are a valuable resource. Here are ten of the best bio flick and pic galleries from around the web.

1. Cells Alive! These photos and and animations of cells, immunological processes and more are certainly alive. Great fun to browse and especially good for teaching.

2. The American Society for Cell Biology Movie and Image Gallery. There’s all sorts of stuff in here – cartoon animations of a moving myosin protein, wonderful movies of fluorescent microtubule dynamics during mitosis… right through to mugshots of famous scientists.

3. Dennis Kunkel Microscopy Inc. A large gallery of stunning, colorized light and electron micrograph photos of everything from algae to human liver to cat hair!

4. National Museum of Science Graphics Gallery. A library of excellent schematic diagrams from Amino Acids to Virus Replication. This is especially good as a teaching or study aid.

5. Wellcome Images. A vast collection of images put together by the Wellcome Trust. As they say on the site “Whether it’s medicine or magic, the sacred or the profane, science or satire – you’ll find more than you expect.”.

6. Molecular Probes Image Gallery. Thousands of user-submitted fluorescent images using Molecular Probes products.

7. The Society of Developmental Biology Gallery. If you are looking for developmental biology images, then look no further but even if you are not, this gallery is well worth a peep – there are a lot of truly beautiful images in there.

8. Fun and Creative Lab Shots. From Ithaca College. Not many images here, but the idea is to make the best creative/funny photo in your lab. Maybe we should run a competition like this here on Bitesize Bio. What do you think? Would you enter?

9. Embi Tec Gel Gallery. Maybe I’m weird but I quite like the look of a nice DNA gel, and the ones in this gallery are very nice.

10. DNA Portraits. Now, I said I like DNA gels, but this is ridiculous. How’s this for a business plan? – Amplify someone’s DNA, run it on a gel, print it on a canvas and sell it for lots of money. Apparently people actually buy this stuff! Maybe I’m in the wrong job…

Before using any of the images on these sites, please check their conditions of use. They vary for each site – some are purely commercial (i.e. you can’t use them without a license) while some are free for use. All of the images I used in this article are from the Wellcome Images Gallery.

Did I miss a gallery that deserves a mention? Put the link in a comment.