Barry Webb’s Macro Photos of the Colorful Slime Mildew World

If you have ever walked by way of a forest and observed unusual, jewel-like growths on a rotting log, you might have brushed previous one of many pure world’s most underrated spectacles: slime molds. Barry Webb, a photographer primarily based in South Buckinghamshire, U.Okay., has made it his process to doc these chic slime molds in breathtaking element.

The unimaginable range of kind and shade of those tiny organisms, he says, retains him obsessively looking for new species to {photograph}. And certainly, that range is actually one thing to behold when checked out.

A Passion for Macro and Flower Photography

Barry first stumbled upon slime molds in November 2019 whereas out photographing fungi. His spouse identified a curious white patch on a beech tree, and when he raised his digital camera lens to it, he discovered a show that fairly fascinated him and would encourage the course of his photographic work. Since then, he has been hooked, spending many hours looking out woodland flooring and decaying logs for brand new species to doc.

Barry, on his curiosity in pictures:

“I became interested in photography in my early 20s. My first camera was a Zenit E, which was totally manual, with no metering system. It soon made me learn the all-important relationship between shutter speed and aperture. I didn’t get serious until I joined the local camera club in the mid 90s. My film of choice became Fuji Velvia, which suited my passion for macro and flower photography.”

But over time, he has additionally develop into an increasing number of fascinated about landscapes, seascapes, and avenue pictures. The use of focus stacking, he says, has opened up one other dimension to his macro pictures.

Tiny Organisms Averaging Just 1 to 4 Millimeters in Height

Slime molds, identified scientifically as Myxomycetes, are straightforward to mistake for fungi, however they belong to a completely completely different kingdom of life. Technically categorized as protists, they dwell as free-moving single cells, feeding on micro organism and decaying natural matter. When circumstances are proper, and proper earlier than they die, they produce terribly stunning fruiting our bodies, which is the stage Barry captures them in, in his pictures.

These organisms are tiny, averaging simply 1 to 4 millimeters in top. That’s doubtless the explanation most of us stroll previous them with out ever noticing them. But underneath Barry’s macro lens, they’re one thing else fully: alien-like sculptures in miniature, filled with shade and distinctive types.

With over 900 identified species of slime mildew on this planet, there isn’t a scarcity of selection. Yet Barry’s archive reveals that richly. From the darkish, globular heads of Comatricha nigra rising on fallen beech logs, to the spongy, coral-like types of Arcyria denudata, to the fragile filaments of Stemonitis balanced on impossibly skinny black stalks, every species has its personal visible character.

The Technical Craft (And Artistry) Behind the Images

Getting these pictures is not any easy process. Barry makes use of a 90mm macro lens and depends on a way known as focus stacking, the place he captures anyplace from 30 to 100 particular person pictures at barely completely different focal factors, then combines them right into a single, razor-sharp composite picture, and the result’s a degree of element that may by no means be simply produced by a single publicity.

His most celebrated picture up to now, ‘Slime Moulds and a Water Droplet‘, gained the Botanical Britain class on the 2026 British Wildlife Photography Awards, chosen from over 12,000 entries. The {photograph} reveals a cluster of Lamproderma scintillans, every simply 1mm tall, on a tiny fragment of wooden from a moist woodchip pile. 

A water droplet sits suspended over the cluster. As it evaporated throughout the shoot, two of the fruiting our bodies dried out and altered again to their unique blue shade right away of pure conversion that Barry was completely positioned to seize. That single picture was assembled from 87 particular person focus-stacked frames.

Attracting the Attention of Audiences Well Beyond the Photography Community

Barry’s work has attracted the eye of audiences properly past the pictures group. Several of his large-format pictures are presently on show on the exhibition Mythos Wald at Gasometer Oberhausen in Germany, working by way of the tip of the yr. 

In the U.Okay., his award-winning pictures might be seen on the 2026 International Garden Photographer of the Year exhibition at Cambridge University Botanic Garden. He has additionally acquired recognition from the Royal Photographic Society and the Close-Up Photographer of the Year competitors.

About Beauty within the Most Unexpected of Places

Perhaps what one might, in essence, say about Barry’s macro pictures work is that it speaks to the peculiar but spectacular pure magnificence that infrequently stridently reveals itself. These tiny microorganisms might not bloom in shiny colours at eye degree or fill a vase with shade, but nonetheless stay exceptional.

Their is the sort of pure magnificence that unassumingly grows in essentially the most surprising locations, like a decomposing log, and barely makes it to a millimeter tall. But when you see them (and their magnificence) on that forest flooring or decaying log, you’ll, doubtless, by no means fairly take a look at (or really feel) these ignored locations the identical once more.

For those that need to discover Barry’s wider archive, which spans a whole lot of species and years of enthusiastic discipline pictures work, his full portfolio and print store can be found at his web site, barrywebbimages.co.uk. He can also be lively on Instagram, the place he usually posts his new finds.

Photos by Barry Webb (@barrywebbimages).