I made a little video showing how I find my slime molds in the woods. You can click the link below to go to my Instagram page. But here are a few bonus tips to help you find them. Ideally, a few consecutive days of rain can really help you find a lot more, but it’s still possible to find mature ones even without any recent rain. Shaded areas are generally better and from what I’ve noticed, if there are mushrooms around, it’s often a good sign that slime molds might be nearby. They’re much smaller than you might think, usually under 2 mm. I always carry a 10x loupe with me so I can take a closer look whenever I spot little spots of color on a log or branch. You often have to lift dead logs or stumps to find them, but sometimes they can be right there on top where they’re easy to spot. Since I use microscope objectives with a motorized rail, I collect my specimens so I can photograph them at home. I’ve often made the mistake of not separating them and putting them all in the same container. The problem is that they end up getting damaged because they’re incredibly fragile. I now use a container with several small compartments and secure them with a needle on a piece of foam. Just because you find some in one spot doesn’t mean there will be more there during the next cycle. That said, I often check the area around the original spot every two weeks to see if anything has started developing. They develop incredibly quickly! I often find ones that are completely white, and by the time I get home, they’ve already started changing appearance. You have to be pretty quick if you want to photograph a specific stage of development. When I find immature slime molds, I always keep them after photographing them so I have the chance to photograph them at different stages. However, not all slime molds will successfully reach the mature stage and release their spores in a controlled environment. Happy hunting! https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdZric_TTVw/?stkn=d3c4djk0bG8za25k

When I looked at this group of Physarium under the microscope, this one particularly caught my attention with its unique stalk and I decided to isolate it to take a portrait of it. I really love its texture with the peridium still intact and its somewhat funky stem compared to the others right next to it. I think this one is my favourite portrait so far! Since I never crop my photos, I was happy to see that my 10x objective gave me the exact framing I wanted! This was shot with OM-1 mark II, 90mm, WeMacro 10x m plan and 2 flashes

Fisheye wide angle macro (WAM) is a fun and challenging way to do macrophotography. I've written about it more than once here, so if you are curious you can look up that information here: https://www.skool.com/macro-photography/a-long-contribution-to-macro-with-a-cctv-relay-lens?p=ed6d163f Here are some recent results, and a look at the camera and very strange lens that was used. The spiders are: Cross Orbweaver (Araneus didematus), and Yellow Argiope (Argiope aurantia). The Cross Orbweaver will be familiar to folks across the pond, where it has a different common name. She turned up in the perfect spot in my yard. The Argiope is a transplant into my yard from a local field. I think it is pretty common to get pictures where the background is dark, and with varying degrees of chromatic aberration. I get both, and I do my best to improve things by taking pictures with different levels of exposure, and combing them in post with layer masks, along with other digital trickery to further balance out exposure and to clean up the CA.

Anyone who caught my recent Adaptalux post probably got a sense of my frustrations 🤣 Safe to say, there won't be another one! So, with mushroom season upon us, I've put together what I think will be a much better continuous-lighting setup for macro. These little SmallRig lights look superb. The larger one is 20W, the smaller 10W, both offer full RGB, and you can push/pull the head to change the spread of light. Best of all, want it brighter or darker? Just turn the knob. 😂 No opening an app, waiting for Bluetooth, mapping which light is attached to which stem, reconnecting things… just switch them on, position them and shoot. Sometimes simple really is better. Paired with the much more substantial bendy lights in the second image and my excellent Amaran lights, I think I've now got more than enough flexibility to cover pretty much any macro lighting scenario. First proper test tomorrow in a local forest that I know is usually great for mushrooms. 🍄📷 Let's see what these little things can do…

I’m looking at getting a loupe to help me find slime molds. Is there anything in particular I should be looking for? I don’t even know if that’s what it’s called. I think I just heard the word in a video. Thanks for your help.