Dark shrooms

Overread · Jun 1, 2008

Well I found these in a to be cleaned bird pen - so before cleaning and after the residents were moved out I took some shots of them. This is by far and away the best that I got - so anyone got any comments or crits to make?
I had to increase the blacks quite a bit in RAW editing, the background was dark, but had the hazy bars showing. The brightness boost after blew out the stems a little and the tops, so I tried (for the first time) the burn tool as well.

Taken with - sigma 70-300mm

at; f16, 0.6sec, ISO 100 with flash
link to larger: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3520/3235309046_776d540dc6_o.jpg

jpenna · Jun 2, 2008

Very cool-looking shrooms. I love the composition on this - great use of negative space...

Dioboleque · Jun 2, 2008

Neat... but nasty! lol... imo I would probably have cropped the left side up to where the nastiness begins, and the top down, putting the left shroom in the upper left corner, eliminating most of the black space and moving the subject from the center. :sillysmi:

Like so... Hope u don't mind!

Overread · Jun 3, 2008

Thanks for the compliments both!
Don't mind at all Diobolique - composition is me weakest area ((I would say at least) so I am always interested in new takes on scenes that I shot - Thanks!

Bifurcator · Jun 19, 2008

Yeah, I think this is one of your best images - ever. I really like it. The edited crop is OK too.

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I'm finding all kinds of stuff I didn't know you had posted by using that tracker thread. Awesome!! Yours is here. cool!

notoriouslightning · Jun 19, 2008

I really like this capture, awesome job.

LaFoto · Jun 20, 2008

Nice contrasts! You did really well in making the background all black!!! They look like mere baby shrooms to me. Nice detail.
But I think that if this had been my photo, it wouldn't have passed uncropped.

Bifurcator · Jun 20, 2008

LaFoto's comment about the BackGround prompted me to actually read Overread's accompanying text, which in turn prompted me to investigate the BG itself - as seen in column 3 row 2. But I got a little carried away and made 8 others as they were looking kinda cool in different ways.

Sorry for the image debauchery Overread.

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Overread · Jun 20, 2008

Thanks for the compliments - LaFoto, I tend to be a little weary of composition so tend to post all that I get in a shot and see what people think, I do this partly to force myself into thinking more about composition when shooting rather than relying on cropping - though I have no problem with crops
If you are interested here is what it looked like from camera:

the background comes from dark sheeting placed behind chicken wire followed by a bit of RAW editing to the blacks to lose the blurred bars.

Interesting conversions Bi - the first has a very cool feel to it, whilst the middle right is showing up some of the hidden details in the background