This season has been especially productive for mushroom photography, and I have been enjoying getting out there each day and seeing what new fungus has popped up overnight. There has been so much variety and so much abundance, I think mostly due to all the rain we have had this season. Here at the farm, most of the wildflowers have finished for the season, and with that, so have the butterflies, bees, and other insects I could normally count on for good photo subjects, so having all the mushrooms around has really been a bonus. Each morning, as Glacier (my dog) and I walk along the trails through the forest, I take special note of what has blossomed overnight so I can come back to photograph it.
I try to keep my setup as simple as possible. Usually, I bring my two macro lenses, my 60mm and my 30mm. As mentioned before, I am an Olympus photographer, so in terms of full-frame 35mm equipment, those two lenses equate to a 120mm and a 60mm lens. The workhorse is the 60mm, which I find suitable for most circumstances. The 30mm comes into its own on bigger subjects, like clumps of mushrooms together. I carry my little Joby flexible 3K Gorillapod tripod, which suits my compact kit just fine, and is worth its weight in gold in the field. Remember from my previous blog post that it's important to have a tripod that fits your gear. My Olympus OM-D EM 1 Mark III is extremely lightweight so the Gorillapod 3K is all I need. The flexible legs let me contour the tripod to fit any condition and allow me to work at ground level for making images of the mushrooms. I also use a cable release because if you are going to the trouble of using a tripod, why not use every means necessary to keep things stable.
Another accessory that can be handy and used in place of a small tripod is a simple bean bag. Any sack filled with beans will do; just make sure it has enough filling of beans or birdseed to support your camera and lens, yet not so full that it won't let the bag cradle your camera. Anything that helps you keep things steady will work. I have used my hat, my jacket, sticks, even my wallet at times to get just the right height and support for my camera. Photography often involves problem-solving in the field, so use your imagination.
Photographing mushrooms is fun, but it can be somewhat challenging. The mushrooms I usually want to photograph always seem to be in odd places that require a contortionist to be able to see through your camera. I often use the LCD screen on the back of the camera, so it is much easier to compose the image. The articulating screens are a godsend and help greatly with this endeavor. I then use autofocus for my preliminary focusing but then use one of my Olympus cameras features to get my focusing point right where I want it. In the past, most would make the photo with our aperture closed to our smallest F-stop, the biggest number, and try to get as much depth of field as necessary for our image. That works, but nearly as well as another method commonly used today, focus stacking. This is another feature that I am grateful for on my Olympus camera; the "in camera" focus stacking. Focus stacking makes multiple exposures and focuses on a different point within the image with each exposure. You take all the images, and in post-production, you stack them together and end up with an image that has perfect focus throughout the photo. This works with any camera and simply requires you to make sure each image is exactly the same and that your camera does not move in-between images.
The beauty of the Olympus system is that the camera has the ability to do all of that in the camera. It will give me all the many images I made if I want to do the post-processing myself, but it will also stack all the images in the camera and give me the image already stacked. There are sometimes reasons to do the post-processing myself, but I am finding that generally speaking, the camera's version is excellent.
Mushrooms love growing in wet places, or at least when things become wet. You can't always wait till things dry off because the mushrooms seem to change overnight in the way they look, and it is not uncommon for a squirrel or chipmunk to eat them. You will find yourself lying on the ground more often than not, so be prepared for damp conditions and dress appropriately.
Whenever you are photographing plants, you need to be aware of the plants you are not photographing. It is so easy to trample other mushrooms, or flowers around you, especially if your entire body is going to be on the ground. A ground cloth can cover up small vegetation that you don't even see until you're down on the ground with them. There are times when a ground cloth will work, but make sure you inspect the area well before using one. It may be impossible not to stomp on some vegetation, but it is incumbent for us to be as mindful and as careful as possible as nature photographers.
I find it essential to examine the image once I make an exposure. What you see in your viewfinder is often misleading. I specifically look for distracting elements that were not noticeable when I made the image. Pine needles or leaves look very natural to our eyes, but a dry needle or light-colored leaf in the background or foreground comes across on the image like an almost white line or white spot. Your eye naturally is drawn to light-colored areas on the image, so you want to make sure you don't have an unsuspecting pine needle photo-bombing your photo.
You may need to tidy up your mushroom and make another image. I tend not to go out into the forest on bright sunny days because the contrast between a dark forest and a sunlit forest is too much for the camera to handle. But sometimes, a ray of light can illuminate a fungus and makes for a mushroom that stands out from the background. Again, an area lit by the sun can show up in your background and be a distraction. Once you make an image, look at your photo. I even carry a loupe to look through to examine what the image looks like once made.
Another thing to be mindful of when photographing mushrooms is that they often pop up in places with lots of leaf litter and other forest debris. I have often not realized that the branch I crunched beneath my knee traveled under the leaf litter and ended right alongside the mushroom I intended to photograph. In kneeling on it, I caused the other end to decapitate the mushroom and ruin my image. "Go gently into the night," but more gently into the forest.
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