Mushroom shots for C&C

[Natalie]

Today I discovered a large clump of orange mushrooms on an oak tree (I guess that means it's dying or something?), and decided to snap a few photos. The sun had disappeared behind the hill about half an hour before I took the photos, giving me a very difficult situation - the light on the mushrooms was very dim, but the sky was still extremely bright and looks overexposed on my photos. I couldn't make the sky come out normal-looking and and have the mushrooms not be completely dark. Is there a way I can sort of manually compromise with this and just fix it in Photoshop?

Being artsy or abstract with these photos wasn't really a concern of mine, I wanted it to be clear that these were mushrooms growing on a tree... Sort of like you might see in a scientific book/field guide about mushrooms, but still interesting too. What does everyone think?

1

2

3

4

 

[JackRabbit]

#3 is spot on! Colors are rich, focus is dialed and I really like the angle that you took this from.

 

[Natalie]

Thanks for the feedback! That was an angle I thought would look pretty good, but I just wish I could have gotten the photo from an even lower angle and with a higher aperture to get the tree slightly more in focus. This is also the only one of the photos I cropped - there was a large portion of ugly, blown-out sky in one of the corners, which I didn't want. Normally I don't like cropping my photos, I guess it feels like a minor failure on the part of the photographer (me) for not getting shot exactly as I wanted and having to crop the "bad" part out or change the composition. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm the only one who feels like that though, hahaha.

 

[ILovePlaya]

3 is my fav too.
Nice capture!!

 

[KKJUN]

1, 2 and 3 are really spot on. I love the colours and the capturing.


4 is a bit boring IMO.

 

[boogschd]

wooooooooow...

is it edible? :lmao:

 

[WimFoto]

the light in them is very nice.
most of these have out of focus grass in the foreground which ruin the image. simply remove them before you shoot.
with these perhaps you can clone them out.
also, other that the first and the last one they are too tightly framed.

 

[Natalie]

Thanks for the feedback everyone, it's really helpful. I'm not sure if the mushrooms are edible, hahaha... They kind of look like Jack-o-Lantern mushrooms, which are poisonous! But then again, they also look like Chanterelles, which are supposed to be some of the best edibles you can find. Who knows...

 

[Xavi]

These are great! I really like 1 and 3. The mushrooms in #1 look a bit like a clam from that angle. cool shots

best wishes

 

[Vicelord John]

colors are great... they look HUGE in those pictures, like man eating mushrooms!

 

[Natalie]

Thanks! The entire clump of mushrooms was probably about a foot across.

 

[nickb98c]

These turned out really well! I love the color and contrast. Great job!

 

[stagi]

I really like the vantage point of the 3rd image that one is the best in my mind.

 

[Rialto]

I love your shots! Did you use photoshop or any other software to enhance the colors in your photos? If so what methods did you use?

 

[Natalie]

Thanks for the comments! Believe it or not, I actually decreased the saturation on most of those photos. I'm still trying to get the saturation settings right on my camera... I think it's at 0 right now, but the colors still sort of seem unreal when I get the photos onto the computer. It could just be because of my laptop screen, though... It's a RGBLED display, designed for photo editing/multimedia, so the colors are very vivid on it. I adjusted (de-saturated) the color on the photos to more accurately reflect the mushrooms in real life, they really were bright orange and almost glowing under the dimming light.