Tomato paste
June 2017
⤴ I came home from holiday and found a heap of mouldy food that my flatmate had left in the fridge. I had my microscope lens on the camera after shooting some sapphires up North so I took some experimental shots while the can of tomato paste was still in the fridge
Tomato paste & yoghurt
April 2019
Second attempt at photographing mould under the microscope ⤴
This time in the studio with flash on camera bounced in to an umbrella to create a soft light.
Back light was a separate flash off camera.
Most of these shots were handheld which is why I used flash and is also a good way to get down low for a different perspective.
Putting the camera on a tripod helped with focus but I think the shots are less engaging.
I started to play around with separating the foreground and background with colour temperature here which is why it looks like there's a blue sky.
Behind the scenes
2019
1. Me photographing some mould in Natimuk
2. A reference of the mould on tomato paste
3. My mould farm out the back of my apartment
4. Mouldy yoghurt produce those lovely golden liquid drops
5. An example of how great it looks in the back of the camera and how horrible it looks in front
Blending images in to one
2019
Combining a few single images in to one
Tomato paste
Dec 2019
Experimenting with different light sources, colour temperature and stacking.
Lemon
Dec 2019
Comparison between stacked image with 3 different colour temperatures and a single image
Lemon
Dec 2019
All of these images use multiple stacked images with different colour temperatures blended together in Photoshop. The bottom image was a test in Helicon focus however the software won't allow colour temperature changes whilst shooting so I adjusted the colour of each layer in Lightroom and then blended them together.
Cake revisited
Dec & Jan 2020
It's a piece of cake...
Jan 2020
☝🏾Here I played around with long exposures using LED lights and stacking multiple photos (between 6 - 12) that were taken with different colour temperatures and gels
Cake
Jan 2020
23 shots stacked using window light and long exposures
You can see there's more detail because I changed the focus less than every mm
I like it when I find mould in two different stages right next to each other
I kept what was furthest from the lens blue to give the image more depth
Peach
Feb 2020
Peach by candlelight and window light from behind
This time there was no stacking. Just some play with colour temperature
Tomato paste
April 2020
This is a time-lapse of me photographing all the images that I stacked together to make the image above
Peach
April, 2020
A few photos of the of those couple of days when the digestive enzymes are secreted and the Hyphae start to appear before turning in to spores.
Lemon squash
May 10, 2020
Unfresh tomato
May 2020
Left image is stacked from 70 images and cropped verticle
Right is a single image processed only in Lightroom
Oyster sauce
May 2020
The Oyster sauce (right) looks like a plate of agar in the lab
Unfresh tomato
May 2020
Stacked from about 165 images
The singular images were still really nice on their own. Above are a couple of examples.
Unfresh tomato
May 2020
Unfresh Tomato
May 2020
Left image is stacked from 165 images. Lit with two tea candle lights on each side
Lemon
July 2020
These images are photo stacked but this time I went back and selected just a couple of hyphae to feature rather than the whole colony. I'm not great at Photoshop though so you can see I had some trouble with the lower part of the stalks.
Mystery food
September 2020
These images are stacked from over 50 images in to Helicon Focus and I played around with the retouching of the background. They are interesting structures and textures however not exactly pretty I guess. I had a little trouble getting full detail in the blend even though I didn't miss any focus shots so I think some parts may have been moving. Nice colours though right? I used fluorescent white balance with a tungsten bulb
Very old tomato
August 2022
Subject / scene - Old tomato
Camera - Sony A7iii
Lens - InfiniProbe TS-160
Magnification - 16 x
Exposure - 5 secs
# of photos (focus stacking) - 40 images
Lighting technique - Light box
Colour temp - Auto
Post-production - Combination of Helicon Focus stack and a single image for the background (shallow DOP)
