Lots of Mushrooms

[jrice12]

Taken with Canon 550D with EF 100/f2.8 Macro USM lens. Tripod or tabletop tripod mount with natural lighting.

My thoughts on these (yours are welcome):
#1: Another upward shot of a single mushroom. This one is yellow and the angle makes it look very tall and big. Plus all of interesting parts are under their disc. Manual focus stack of five shot at f5.6, I left the very back out of focus - seems more natural that way.

#2: Lamp shade mushrooms. I have never seen this type before but they do look like the lamp displays at a lighting store. These are very small and delicate. Some have a strange white glow at the top as if they had a light bulb in there. The bottom is a bed of dead birch leaves where the stalks have polked through. Unfortunately the mid-section of the backgound has an upturned leaf that gives a dark casting there.

#3: Dirty orange mushrooms. These are getting older and more dirty. The little blurry one at lower right is clean and so is out of place and a bit distracting to me. Like the DOF on this one, several of the central shrooms have good clarity along with the left side of the log, while their bases are blurry indicated that this is a depression in the log. Neat fuzzy white stuff at their bases. Didn't like the blue/green leaf at far left forming a line with the bottom of the nearest shroom. Lke the lighting, shroom domes are lit up while their stems and the floor below are shaded (general upper-left to lower right reduction in brightness).

#4: Solitary white mushroom between tree branches. I kind of like this one - the only color is the background which is highly bracketed on three sides and opens to infinity at the top. The shroom has clarity while the spider web is more ghostly. Tree "V" does a fair job of directing eye to shroom. There might be a bit too much tree, maybe cropping closer? Or better maybe to move camera down slightly and in closer.

#5: Orange mushroom group. This one challenges our perception - take away the mushrooms and you have an upside-down landscape! The mushrooms, however, are correctly oriented going up towards the light source. And no, I didn't wash these.


#6: Tight fit. Like the way the middle one has elbowed its way between the others - a metephor for life in the forest.

 

[dxqcanada]

Nice. I always like taking pictures of shrooms.

Are you using a reflector ... or off camera fill flash ?

 

[jrice12]

Nice. I always like taking pictures of shrooms.

Are you using a reflector ... or off camera fill flash ?

Just don't eat any of them - I think they are all of the poisonous kind!

I don't own a flash unit and haven't used flash - something I need to learn yet. I do have a portable 12" diffuser that I use in direct sunlight. I also have a piece of cardboard with crinkly tin foil that I can use to reflect some fill when needed. However, for the above set I didn't use either of them - just natural, diffused, sunlight.

 

[dxqcanada]

Ah, yeah I did not think you were really using flash.
Some of them look like some reflected light was added to lighten the underside.

I do keep a small Grey/White card in my bag just to reflect some light ... though most of the time I forget that I have it.

 

[jrice12]

The forest has pretty subdued lighting for the most part. Many of my images are a bit flat on lighting becuase of it and I think a flash would provide improvement, but that is after I graduate Photography 101 (I am still learning composition and basic technical skills).

Some of my better shots have been when the leaves allow a single, narrow, beam of light through to the subject (rare but does happen). The spot-lighting effect can really transform the image! Sometimes I have marked a spot and waited for the sun to move to try to get that effect. The following is an example (sorry, I think I have posted this one before) - the top of the mushroom pair was just being struck by a beam of light through the leaves above making the "glow". Had to wait about 1/2 hour before the beam hit just right. We see just a bit of the beam on the dead wood to the right also, enhancing the dark orange colors. The light is still scattered by the leaves so you don't get a "point source" but rather just a brightening up of a small area of the image.

 

[dxqcanada]

Ah, you have more patience than I.

Most of the time I don't even carry my tripod with me when I am hiking ... so I tend to grab quick shots wide open.
With my new camera (with swivel LCD) and macros, I will be working on some better shroom images with my tripod.

 

[dxqcanada]

Ah, yeah I did not think you were really using flash.

Oops, I just figured out you stated "natural lighting" in your first sentence.