aka common mycena - these fruit on hardwood logs or stumps and are reported to be bioluminescent, but of course I couldn’t tell in daylight. It would be cool to see though.
This is one of my favorite kinds of images to produce - one with lots of canopy bokeh and a pretty decent specimen to feature. Even an LBM can be pretty. Lucky for me the log spanned a small depression in the ground and I could get the tripod well below to eliminate the undergrowth on the other side of the log. Messed with aperture settings until I liked the bokeh balls in back.
Specific Feedback Requested
Open to ideas for improvement
Technical Details
Tripod for camera, Gorilla Pod for LED panel just to the right and out of frame
Focus bracketing - 11 images using 0/+ method and probably 4 or 5 step
Lr for initial crop a bit of white balance and some taming of the dynamic range. Sharpening and targeted noise reduction using masking.
Zerene for stacking, DMap image with about 95% contrast threshold because the background changed like crazy with the canopy moving around in the wind. I didn’t have to do nearly as much retouching as a result, but I did some.
Lr again for some work with masking to emphasize the LED light source and minimize the background and log. Added texture and clarity, but lowered the dehaze slider.
I think this little 1 1/2 inch mushroom would be pleased to be thought of as standing tall. If it had a brain. Which it might in a sense. Fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants and have some astonishing characteristics that might be akin to directed action.
Hi Kris. I only ask this because I’m learning. I noticed that you left the debris on the LBM. Is this something you do for all of your shots or is it selective? I’ve been cloning the debris off of my LBM.
I will sometimes leave stuff if it seems appropriate. I wasn’t sure what this dark thing was. Could have been a slug or an insect, but it turned out to be a hemlock needle. So that’s in the field. In processing I usually leave a lot of the natural aspect of mushrooms on them - bite marks, tears, dirt, needles, crud - whatever. Unless it’s terribly distracting and then I’ll have removed it before taking any photos. Anything I leave I can live with mostly.
