Some more from Wisconsins' Northwoods - part 3

[jrice12]

All were taken with Canon 550D with EF 100mm/f2.8 Macro USM lens. All were at ISO 200. All were taken with tripod or table-top tripod. Natural lighting and very overcast. CC welcome.

#1 Mushroom Family. Texture highlights these little brown spheres. Can see some of them broken open and spores released while others are not quite mature yet. Wanted to crop out that far upper left one but that would have made the one with big opening too close to the edge - maybe I could have done something with image rotation? Lighting is a bit flat, maybe could have improved with gamma curves in PP.

#2 Rock and Grass. The grass is moss and the rock is a decaying acorn (and not very compelling at that). Still, I kept this one because of the background and DOF.

#3 Red Mushrooms. I really like the red shrooms in all their forms. Think I have just enough foreground color to balance the red and browns. The back right looks like a campfire but is actually a dead branch with red mushrooms under and orange mushrooms behind it (neat effect). Don't like the dead "skeleton" leaf at left and wish I had removed it. Little "log" at lower right corner is a little distracting too.

#4 Orange Mushrooms on Wall. backlit mushrooms have a bright background. There's actually a lot of fine texture here but the JPG wipes that out mostly. Small washout spot on one of the middle outside shrooms.

#5 White Plate Mushroom. This one came out pretty well. Like the convolutions and the dark brown line patterns. This one was done at f16 to get as much of the tearing in the background in focus as possible (though it added some interest). While lighting was a little flat, there is still some shadowing going on with some depth coming through.

#6 Speckled Globe. Image is dominated by the large spherical mushroom. Rest of image is rather dark except the highlighted secondary subject at lower right (for balance). Again, JPG plays havoc with the fine detail of the speckles. There was a lot of maneuvering with the camera to get the three shrooms in the same focal plane and still have a good composition.

 

[cgipson1]

terrific shots! Mushrooms are really interesting subjects.. both as subjects , and as edibles! I particularly like the fourth shot... love the colors and constrast.

 

[jrice12]

Very interesting. Almost to a person, everyone I have shown it to likes #4, yet it is one of my least favorite keepers. I think I don't like the lack of clarity (kind of muddy to my eye), subject doesn't seem to have much "punch" to me. Can you say what it is about #4 that catches your eye - composition? background? lighting? Subject? Color?

 

[cgipson1]

hmmm... the leading mushrooms are in good focus, and the colors contrast beautifully with the green moss. the background is very soft... nicely colored to again contrast with the mushrooms.

It may also be a subconscious thing.. the mushrooms look like food... comfort food, like fine pastries or biscuits with the color and shape they have. That may be one of the attractions also...

EDIT: that photo almost reminds me of some excellent food photography, for some reason... strange, huh? The more I look at it now (trying to analyze the attraction)... the more I think of food... lol!

 

[jrice12]

The way to a photographer is through their stomach! If I look at that image and then flip back and forth between it and the one above or below I feel there is a lack of clarity compared to those. I think in the end the backlighting didn't work well with that particular subject. In particular, the largest and best focused shroom (thus primary subject) is also the one most in shadow - furthermore, its primary interest (the little dirt specks) are in the deepest shadow of all. It's as though my eye is really trying to get a fix on those dirt spects but can't so judges the entire image as lack of clarity or dark(?)

Anyway, thanks for the evaluation - I appreciate it.