{"id":351592,"date":"2026-03-17T23:27:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T23:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/351592\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T23:27:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T23:27:07","slug":"how-do-you-photograph-a-chicken-inside-an-egg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/351592\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do You Photograph a Chicken Inside an Egg?"},"content":{"rendered":"

YouTuber Jeremy Fielding<\/a> generally makes videos about engineering, which are definitely worth checking out in their own right if titles like \u201cThe Ultimate Guide to Linear Actuators\u201d<\/a> sound like a good time to you. (No shade, that particular video is great.) But Fielding\u2019s latest video is something quite different: A detailed interview<\/a> with his friend Anand Varma<\/a>, a science photographer whose photo of a just-hatched chick was one of National Geographic\u2019s photos of the year<\/a> for 2025.<\/p>\n

And while the award-winning photo is striking, it\u2019s not even the most interesting chicken-related work Varma has produced. That particular title goes to a time-lapse of a chick developing from an embryo inside an egg. Fielding found himself wondering how on earth Varma managed to get this footage\u2014and, for that matter, how he approached some of his other memorable projects, which include capturing bees developing from larvae into drones; super high-speed footage of a hummingbird cleaning itself; and the terrifying fungus that turns ants into zombies and inspired The Last of Us.<\/p>\n

Fielding\u2019s curiosity has proved a boon for everyone else, because his visit to Berklee to see Varma makes for genuinely fascinating viewing. We watch as Varma gives an impromptu tour of his studio and answers hitherto-unasked questions like \u201cHow does one artificially inseminate a queen bee?\u201d (With a very steady hand, if you\u2019re wondering.) As an engineer, Fielding\u2019s questions focus largely on the technical aspects of Varma\u2019s work processes, although there is one very amusing exchange about the mysteries of art that went like this:<\/p>\n

Fielding: \u201cYou can execute everything exactly right, but still look at the end photograph and feel, \u2018That\u2019s not it.\u2019\u201d
Varma: \u201cYeah. There\u2019s a taste element you can\u2019t just solve for.\u201d
Fielding: \u201cIt\u2019s not like you can just plug it into an equation.\u201d
Varma (ruefully): \u201cThat\u2019s the holy grail, you know. To have the Equation for Wonder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Art: How it do?<\/p>\n

Anyway, despite his lack of access to the Equation for Wonder, Varma\u2019s work does elicit genuine moments of, well, wonder. The egg project, in particular, is startlingly beautiful, so much so that it might put non-vegans off tomorrow\u2019s breakfast. It also proves as much a triumph of engineering as it does a work of art.<\/p>\n

We see Varma carefully halving an eggshell with a die grinder and using the piece he\u2019s cut as a template for a 3D-printed equivalent. He then quite literally cracks an egg into this shell, covers it with a glass sheet, and places this \u201cegg\u201d into an incubator that\u2019s been fitted out with a downward-facing camera. The resultant footage is sent to a computer that compiles time-lapse videos.<\/p>\n

Some of Varma\u2019s other work<\/a> is equally fascinating: a hummingbird shaking water off itself in the same way that a dog might doesn\u2019t necessarily sound like a recipe for a compelling photograph, but the result\u2014shot at an extremely high shutter speed to capture the tiny bird in flight\u2014is proof that Varma knew what he was talking about when he pushed back against his editor\u2019s contention that every interesting photo of a hummingbird had already been taken. On that note, there\u2019s also some interesting discussion about how the sausage is made\u2014Varma explains how he collaborates (and sometimes argues) with his editors to formulate and refine concepts for projects, a process that\u2019ll be familiar to anyone who\u2019s ever worked in any sort of journalistic endeavor.<\/p>\n

The entire video is well worth checking out\u2014Fielding is a quiet and considerate interviewer, letting Varma expand on his history and his work, and sharing his own perspectives on the engineering challenges involved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"YouTuber Jeremy Fielding generally makes videos about engineering, which are definitely worth checking out in their own right…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[159993,307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60,266,263],"class_list":["post-351592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-anand-varma","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-photography","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}