ILNP- Mutagen Swatches

I've had these swatches of I Love Nail Polish's Mutagen in my archives for a while and haven't posted them for a few reasons. As much as this polish is beautiful, it's equally hard to photograph. It's been swatched many times by ladies much more talented than me and I'm not bringing anything new or earth shattering to the table. I also took so many photos it was hard to choose which ones to post. In the end I narrowed it down to these. They might not be the best pictures ever taken but they're not half bad and they're mine. I love this polish and I had a ton of fun playing around trying to capture all the shifts. 

I've taken photos in a bunch of different lighting so you can see how the polish looks in different settings. I've got on three coats with no base color, although I've read a black base can make multichromes pop more. The pictures above were taken in a light box with diffused lighting. You can see the colors shift from green to a bluish purple at the edges.

The next pictures were taken outside. The one above is direct sunlight. It has crazy green metallic shine like a green beetle. Below is indirect sunlight. At some angles you get a soft peachy reflection. This is the shift that was most easily observable to me in person. In low light I often saw a pink glow almost hovering over the surface of the green polish.

I've also read that photographing a multichrome underwater helps bring out all the colors of the shift at once. My aquarium has a great light and lots of fish.. and water. The fish are always very happy to see me since it means they'll get fed soon. They were excited to participate in my photo session. This seemed like a good idea, but it was really hard to keep the angle of the light from reflecting too much off the surface of the water and get a good clear picture of the nails at the same time. The first picture has great shift but blurry fishies. The second picture has awesome fish, but the polish looks plain. I love the swirly colors of the fish tails. I Just wish I could have gotten these two things combined into one picture. 

After the aquarium experiment I moved on to a bowl of water inside my light box. I was able to capture some great pictures of the shift, but the pictures are soft and blurry due to the reflections on the surface of the water. I would love to know how other people get such crisp, bright underwater pictures. Waterproof camera? You can see below that Mutagen shifts from a vibrant green to blue and fuchsia back to a golden yellow-green.

Mutagen is one of my first multichrome polishes. I bought a few more from ILNP at the same time and so far I've been thoroughly impressed. They really do live up to the hype. I sat around at my desk all day wiggling my fingers back and forth to catch all the different colors.

What do you think of this one? Worth the hype or overrated?