After posting my GF sourdough recipe, it struck me that there was no way for readers to know if the leaven was actually doing what it should - ie, producing gas. Now a GF leaven does not look like a wheat leaven so I can understand how someone might be skeptical. So I went back to my photo shoot, knowing I could prove the leaven was alive (that is, moving) with some simple Photoshop work:

This is a fun thing I love to show my students. Take three shots in a row of a moving subject with your digital camera firmly fastened to a tripod. Import all three images into Photoshop. Switch the Layers palette to show channels. There's four channels for every photo - full color, red separation, green separation, blue separation. Choosing one of the images, select and then delete two of its channels. Copy a corresponding channel from one of the other images and replace one of the deleted ones, copy the other corresponding channel from the other image and replace the other deleted image. 

Anything that moved will have changed position from one frame to the next. Hence, it will reveal its motion as color.

Here's what happens when I did the above with three shots of my millet leaven:

Colorful bubbles prove that it's alive.

You can find more about photography at my website, www.underthewildsky.com, or follow my GF travails at  http://myceliaglutenfree.blogspot.com/

Charles Luce