I was asked to shoot some photos for another Inter Press Service story by Enrique Gili about Stephen Mayfield and his program at UCSD. They are using algae to create oil that will hopefully replace traditional oil. This was one of my favorite assignments as I had no idea this was going on and I learned a lot. Below is a link to the story on the IPS website as well as the photos that were not used. I was hoping to be in a lab with huge tanks of algae that I could back light. As it turns out I had 3 minutes with Stephen and they just moved into their lab so all they had was a few petri dishes.

This is the lab they just moved in to a few days ago. Not the giant tanks of algae I was hoping for.

 

Here is Stephen Mayfield standing alongside the algae cultures.

 

Early stages of algae-oil. Stephen explaining some of the finer points.

 

 

Stephen said most of his biology career has been based around algae.

 

 

This is the shot that ended up running with the story.