Vivid Shrooms

very nice colors. I've become so used to seeing over saturated, over sharpened color photographs that yours looked a bit strange at first. Then relaxingly natural.
juan

Yes, the light is nice, perfect under-canopy shadows. It always amazes me where these fungi grow.

And not that anyone asked, but my trusty field guide to mushrooms tells me it's probably Jack O'Lantern (Omphalotus olearius), poisonous (stomach cramps for a day or two) and if you pick one fresh and put it in a dark room the gills glow an eerie green. Now you know!

Thanks.

What?!!!! They glow in the dark? Hmm, now that I have to see. I am afraid that our humidity is on the way down now though, they could pack it up at any time.

One curious thing, whilst working on them I noticed a very fine, almost imperceptible dust rising from them in the breeze. I am not sure if it was just moisture rising from a patch warmed by a sunbeam, or perhaps spores spreading? Any mycologists here?!

awesome. i love mushroom photos. this is one of the best.

Nicely done. You've done a good job getting down to their level to the show the mushrooms' view of the world and the light they receive from above.

Keith,

This is an excellent photograph with a difficult subject matter. How did you meter the scene?

Tom

Thanks. Kevin, regarding the perspective, it was a bit of a nutty setup to get what I was after. Here is a shot off my cell phone... which I sometimes do to record notes etc. As you see, the crown graphic is turned over on a tripod with the stem inverted, which gets the bed off the ground....



Tom, the light was quite contrasty but within astia's capabilities so I went with that. I decided to give priority to the highlights, preferring them to be a hot yellow/orange but not white. So I just spot metered for those and assumed that bellows factor would take the exposure on the highlights down a bit more... and let the shadows "fall".... Then, to check my metering, I did a quick (and not carefully composed or focused) shot on fp100c instant film, which confirmed that I was more or less right, so off I went with the quickload. I did see a b&w comp but it was quite different form this one (orange filtered and requiring softer light with no specular highlights, therefore a long exposure after sunset) and decided to go back for that. Those negs, 5x7 fp4+, are currently drying in the darkroom, so please stay tuned

areaeleven, I went back tonight to see if there was any glow but alas there was too much ambient light. However I did meet a little frog and so I snapped a shot of him handheld at ISo 6400 with the technology we do not discuss and posted that on facebook Maybe I will go back tomorrow night and put a darkcloth over and try to see the luciferase glow.

I think the dust-like substance you saw was spore. They're very small, 2 microns or so. New patches await! This is their 'season' on the east coast, until November-ish. It's opposite (over winter) on the west coast. I sound like some sort of expert, but it's all Audubon I swear

It's amazing the flora and fauna that appears when you get down to their level. A new world at our feet.