How Do You {Photograph} a Hen Inside an Egg?

YouTuber Jeremy Fielding usually makes movies about engineering, that are positively price testing in their very own proper if titles like “The Ultimate Guide to Linear Actuators” sound like an excellent time to you. (No shade, that specific video is nice.) But Fielding’s newest video is one thing fairly completely different: A detailed interview together with his pal Anand Varma, a science photographer whose picture of a just-hatched chick was one in every of National Geographic’s photos of the year for 2025.

And whereas the award-winning picture is putting, it’s not even probably the most attention-grabbing chicken-related work Varma has produced. That specific title goes to a time-lapse of a chick growing from an embryo inside an egg. Fielding discovered himself questioning how on earth Varma managed to get this footage—and, for that matter, how he approached a few of his different memorable tasks, which embody capturing bees growing from larvae into drones; tremendous high-speed footage of a hummingbird cleansing itself; and the terrifying fungus that turns ants into zombies and impressed The Last of Us.

Fielding’s curiosity has proved a boon for everybody else, as a result of his go to to Berklee to see Varma makes for genuinely fascinating viewing. We watch as Varma provides an impromptu tour of his studio and solutions hitherto-unasked questions like “How does one artificially inseminate a queen bee?” (With a really regular hand, in case you’re questioning.) As an engineer, Fielding’s questions focus largely on the technical features of Varma’s work processes, though there may be one very amusing trade concerning the mysteries of artwork that went like this:

Fielding: “You can execute everything exactly right, but still look at the end photograph and feel, ‘That’s not it.’”
Varma: “Yeah. There’s a taste element you can’t just solve for.”
Fielding: “It’s not like you can just plug it into an equation.”
Varma (ruefully): “That’s the holy grail, you know. To have the Equation for Wonder.”

Art: How it do?

Anyway, regardless of his lack of entry to the Equation for Wonder, Varma’s work does elicit real moments of, properly, surprise. The egg venture, particularly, is startlingly stunning, a lot in order that it would put non-vegans off tomorrow’s breakfast. It additionally proves as a lot a triumph of engineering because it does a murals.

We see Varma fastidiously halving an eggshell with a die grinder and utilizing the piece he’s lower as a template for a 3D-printed equal. He then fairly actually cracks an egg into this shell, covers it with a glass sheet, and locations this “egg” into an incubator that’s been fitted out with a downward-facing digital camera. The resultant footage is shipped to a pc that compiles time-lapse movies.

Some of Varma’s other work is equally fascinating: a hummingbird shaking water off itself in the identical approach {that a} canine would possibly doesn’t essentially sound like a recipe for a compelling {photograph}, however the outcome—shot at an especially excessive shutter pace to seize the tiny chicken in flight—is proof that Varma knew what he was speaking about when he pushed again towards his editor’s competition that each attention-grabbing picture of a hummingbird had already been taken. On that notice, there’s additionally some attention-grabbing dialogue about how the sausage is made—Varma explains how he collaborates (and generally argues) together with his editors to formulate and refine ideas for tasks, a course of that’ll be acquainted to anybody who’s ever labored in any kind of journalistic endeavor.

The whole video is properly price testing—Fielding is a quiet and thoughtful interviewer, letting Varma broaden on his historical past and his work, and sharing his personal views on the engineering challenges concerned.