aka Pinesap…my old nemesis. I’ve never seen it here in Wisconsin so consider my socks knocked off to discover it on the Turtle Rock IAT segment - my surrogate backyard. I found this solitary flower pushing up through the leaves and did an 11-image stack. These aren’t the brilliant red of the variety I found in Massachusetts, but I still am wowed by their beauty. They are a pale, buttery yellow and very soft to the touch. It’s about 2 inches high.
Normally the flowers grow in clusters on this saprophytic plant which is a cousin to my beloved Indian pipe. I have a couple of shots of the clusters, but they’re messy and I haven’t worked through them yet. These are the freshest blossoms I saw that day and was over the moon about them.
These and other flowers like them are in a class called mycoheterotrophs - they do not have chlorophyll (the substance that makes plants green and capable of photosynthesis). Instead they have a symbiotic relationship with certain fungi and receive nutrients through their roots. In return they provide the fungi with sugars.
Now I know where some grow I will definitely be returning to record their subtle beauty for years to come.
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Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Tripod and probably a CPL - Focus bracketing using 0/-/+ method since it was difficult to find the closest point to me.
Lightroom for a crop to isolate more than I could in the field since it was growing on a slope with its sisters. General improvements to white balance, exposure, white & black points, texture, clarity & sharpness. Zerene for the stacking - PMax output with retouching. I painted in a softer background than the Pyramid process produced and also softened the foreground leaf a bit more than it came natively in the stack process. Further color and clarity management in Lr.
The lighting and subtle detail here is stunning. From the thumbnail, I thought it was growing between rocks. I hope we get to see many more examples of these amazing things. The almost invisible and incredibly complex ecosystem of fungi is so under-appreciated.
I really like this, Kris. And I appreciate the biology info as it adds meaning. Nice work on the focus stacking too. I’m not familiar with the 0/-/+ method of focus stacking. Is that something in your Panasonic is able to do?
I am a little distracted by the dark spot in the upper right background. Probably could crop or clone it out. The crack in the leaf in the lower left also pulls my eye away, but not sure how to correct that.
Thanks @Diane_Miller & @David_Bostock - I am working through a couple other images of these so stay tuned. The link in the OP goes to my blog post about the first time I shot them.
David - I don’t know how it works with other cameras, but my Panasonic has two methods for focus bracketing - 0/+ starts at the point you select for the first image and focuses further back in the scene with each photo, 0/-/+ starts at the point you select for the first image then focuses in front for the next and in back of the original point for the next and so on. You can do up to 999 images in a bracketing session and vary the step between each focus point from +1 to I think +9 or 10. The larger the number the larger the distance between focus points. Does that make sense?
I thought about removing the spot, but forgot and the crack…well I can probably get rid of it, too, but I’m not sure how I’ll like it. It’s only 1s and 0s so I can do both and compare.
Hi @Kris_Smith, thanks for the info on your camera’s focus stacking. My camera has the same 0/+ setting but not the 0/-/+. Instead it has a setting where you focus on the near point, then focus on the far point and it takes care of the rest. That works really well for macro work.
I use the 0/+ mode for any landscape/nature images where I want the full scene in focus. I spent the last year and a half at our Portland Japanese Garden making tons of focus stacked images. Lots of fun when it’s not windy.
Mostly I use 0/+ as well, but sometimes I can’t quite tell the nearest point to me and will use the 0/-/+ method at a critical focus point (like a frog’s eye) and let the camera get shots on either side of that. I like the idea of the other method you describe. Maybe in the replacement for the G9 or new firmware.
