A photographer who specialises in taking photos of microscopic details has won an accolade at the British Photography Awards 2025.
Barry Webb was named the winner of the People’s Choice Award for Macro Photography. Much of his photography centres on slime moulds, single-celled organisms which average between one and four millimetres in size.
As well as being an award-winning photographer, Barry is also a friend and supporter of Woodoaks Farm in Maple Cross. He has exhibited his work at the farm and given a couple of talks which have all been well attended.
Asked how he first began his journey taking photos of slime moulds, Barry told Ricky News: “In 2019, I joined the Bucks Fungus Group and soon found myself being asked to take photographs of the smaller fungi. On one occasion, someone found a slime mould and I was asked to photograph it. When I looked at the image on my computer screen later that day, I was surprised by the intricate details that had not been visible to the naked eye. I had never seen anything like it before. This was how my interest in slime moulds began.”
Shooting subjects which are only a few millimetres tall, however, can prove something of a challenge and requires special techniques to get it right.
Barry said: “Multiple shots are taken at slightly different points of focus, and then specialist software is used to combine them, to achieve the necessary depth of focus. Sometimes the final image is made from more than 100 single shots.”
Barry added that being named the People’s Choice winner was “a wonderful surprise”.
He said: “It was a wonderful surprise to find out that this year, one of my images had been chosen as the ‘People’s Choice’ winner in the macro category of the British Photography Awards. I felt especially honoured that fellow photographers and the general public had voted for my image.”
Posting on Facebook after the announcement, Woodoaks Farm said: “You’ve always been so generous with your time and humble in your achievements, but we consider you a giant in the macro world!”
For more of Barry’s work, follow @barrywebbimages on Instagram or visit www.barrywebbimages.co.uk
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