Name: Barry Webb
Picture title: Slime Mould Spheres
Category: Plants & Fungi
Nationality: British
Occupation: Gardener / Photographer

Barry says:
‘This image is a stack of 60 focus bracketed shots, stacked in Zerene Stacker. It shows 3mm tall, immature fruiting bodies of the slime mould Comatricha nigra. It was taken in situ, on a decaying Beech branch in a mixed woodland in Buckinghamshire, UK, in December 2019.

There was a patch of orange jelly fungus, growing on the same piece of wood, a few centimetres behind the slime mould. The tripod was positioned carefully so that I could use the orange colouring of the fungus as a contrasting background to the white slime mould spheres.

The great advantage of focus stacking is that it allows you to use a large aperture to create a pleasing, soft background. Slime moulds sometimes take only a few hours to change from this immature stage to the more commonly seen spore bearing stage. This Comatricha species becomes brown when the fruiting body matures.’

Technical information:
Olympus  OMD EM1 mk 11
Zuiko 60mm macro
ISO 200
f/4
1/25sec
Accessories: Gitzo Explorer tripod, 16mm Kenko extension tube, Olympus cable release.
Post processing: Zerene Stacker was used to stack the 60 focus bracketed images. Lightroom was used for minor adjustments and to crop the image to a square format and create a vignette.

Website: barrywebbimages.co.uk
Instagram: barrywebbimages