Last Updated on 03/28/2025 by Nilofer Khan
Our world offers several exceptional scenes and sceneries in varied shapes and forms. From the beauty of the Himalayas to the colorful coral underwater, there are so many elements for one to easily touch, feel, witness, and hold. While we connect to the larger surroundings, there are multiple miniature, alluring subjects around us whose majesty we can’t truly comprehend. For instance, mayflies in nature, amino acids, or human tears. One person who has been able to capture the beauty of things we can’t possibly imagine is Yogendra Joshi, a photographer who keeps reminding us of how magical our microscopic world is. “My heart has been in macro photography,” he explains. “I am always aiming to reveal what’s usually invisible. That combined with my keen interest in nature translated into insect macro photography,” he adds.
All images are by Yogendra Joshi and used with permission. For more, visit his website or you can follow him on Instagram @yogendrajoshi1.
Symphonies of the Unseen
Yogendra Joshi’s journey began in 2009 when he took pictures during his travels around India. However, with his interest lying in macro, Joshi realized that the best way to pursue this passion would be to shoot insects and progress to high-speed water drop collision photography. One could say that this liking further helped him to explore macro photography, especially when COVID-19 hit the world in 2020. “I saw some posts about chemical crystals under a microscope and cobbled together my own microscope (sort of) using all my macro photography gear to start exploring ‘art with chemicals,'” he explains. “I got so hooked on it that I eventually migrated to a proper microscope setup and built a full-scale lab with over a hundred chemicals at my home,” he added.
I challenge myself to keep my edit on any given photo to less than 2 minutes. Anything more and I better take another photo to make it better in camera.
Yogendra Joshi
From here on, he began to develop his macro world, and soon, he photographed varied elements, from sliced stones under the microscope to sound waves to flowers, using an X-ray. “I experimented with sugar, salt, vitamin C, medicines, fertilizers, caffeine, and practically anything I can get my hands on,” he says. The results were nothing short of otherwordly jewels staring at us. The vivid colors and unique patterns only draw the viewers closer to inspect what they are staring at. Some may find an answer, but others are left hypnotized by the magical quality of an unseen particle. “I am always on the lookout to experiment and explore something new which I can bring to my viewers. I am literally trying to find everything under the sun to bring hidden beauty to people,” he added.
While he was on this journey to explore varied chemicals and elements, a “thought struck” him: Human tears have salt. “What if I can make art out of it?” asks Yogendra Joshi. “I explored some scientific literature and realized that it’s feasible,” he says. It was then just a matter of convincing his daughter to “lend” him some of her tears. “Thankfully, we could do it the less dramatic way, by looking at a fan and not really making her cry,” he adds, revealing he didn’t have to rely on some external agents. Once the teardrop dried up, Joshi went on to photograph the “patterns” from the salt in his daughter’s tears, which were quite “fascinating.” As you can see above, the result is wonderful. In some ways, it appears like icicle flowers inching closer to one another, just as our tears tend to bring people together.
The Making Of The Lab
Since Yongendra Joshi’s work requires him to get as close to the elements and specimens as he can, he relies on several different gears and setups. He initially worked on Canon 550D and macro adapters before switching to Canon 7D Mk II with a Canon 100mm lens for macro. Just three years ago, he switched to Sony a7 IV, Tamron 28-200mm for his travel photography, Sony 200-600mm for birding, and Sony 90mm for macro photography. When it comes to his microscopic work, Joshi relies on an Olympus CX21i microscope with a custom adapter.
AI has learning (looking at millions of images in the past) and capability to imagine (GenAI tools to create new images), but what it lacks is the ‘human intent’. And that’s where we as artists can stand tall and keep creating something new, unique and ‘our own.’
Yogendra Joshi
His setup is as important for him as his photographs; after all, this is how he is able to see the unseen magic in the first place. “When I got my first microscope, it was hard to figure out how to connect my DSLR to it and avoid any light loss,” he explains. While adapters are available, they are also challenging to acquire. And so, Joshi took the matter into his own hands and decided to make his own. “I ended up building my own coupler adapter (the steel bit you see on the microscope) and then using multiple extension tubes to connect the camera to it,” Yogendra says. “This is needed to avoid the heavy vignetting you get when attaching a camera to a microscope viewfinder or dedicated aperture,” he added. While camera manufacturers do make these adapters, they are not always available for everyone. “This is tricky, but that’s what makes it a lot of fun to crack the equipment puzzle and then get to the true photography,” he says.
In the end, Yogendra Joshi reminds us how curiosity is key to becoming a great photographer. Had he not been able to look for more, we may have missed what makes every element and chemical so visually unique. At a time when people are losing faith in the medium, Joshi proves how every single photograph is a whole new world waiting to be explored.
AUTHENTICITY STATEMENT
The Phoblographer works with human photographers to verify that they’ve actually created their work through shoots. These are done by providing us assets such as BTS captures, screenshots of post-production, extra photos from the shoot, etc. We do this to help our readers realize that this is authentically human work. Here’s what this photographer provided for us.
