The open space area behind our home has several cottonwood stumps. The area they are located in has a large spring running under it which provides lots of soil moisture. Every spring, the stumps are heavily laden with oyster mushrooms. I had a new-to-me medium format Fujifilm GFX100s this spring so, of course, I had to try it out.
Feedback Requests
Any and all suggestions, comments, or criticism is welcome. I am wondering if I sharpened it too much or if the tonal range is appropriate for the subject. Perhaps I should have focus-stacked rather than stopping down. I did focus-stack the next view of the subject. I may put that shot up later.
Gorgeous!! I love the silver tones with the dark grasses and wood, and the darks look very pleasing without any feeling of low contrast. The mushrooms have very interesting shapes and wonderful tonalities. I would never guess this wasn’t a stack as everything looks sharp. My only thought would be to wonder about toning down the partial clump on the right edge, but that’s a small nit.
Fred, Amazing tree oysters. I like the way they cascade down the stump like a crashing wave frozen in time. The textures and detail are very captivating. Your processing creates a very moody tone to the image. As Diane already mentioned, the alien blob on the right of the image is a bit of a distraction. Great find. Thanks for sharing.
The tones on the mushrooms are just wonderful and attract all the attention. I like how they appear to be spilling out of the stump like a waterfall. The other mass of mushrooms on the right do grab my eye and I wish they were not there.
Thank you all for your kind comments. The mushrooms on the right hand side of the stump were destroyed by someone’s errant child between the first time I went out and the second attempt. The entire stump was surrounded by wonderful growth before the vandalism occurred. I have removed the sheared off mushrooms in this version. Are there further comments? I’m always open to suggestions.
Beautiful image, Fred. I think your decision to render this in black and white works very well do to all the wonderful textures. I don’t think you went too far in sharpening as for me this is all about textures. While I don’t applaud the destruction, I do prefer the second version.
Thank you. As I consider it, I probably should have done a bit of “gardening” and removed the already shattered remnants of the mushrooms on the right. I was a bit disturbed by the destruction I guess.
Fred: My apologies for the tardy response to this fine image. I do some stacking and enjoy it but at heart I’m a single capture guy and think that served you well here. I find a stack most useful for large deep landscapes and for intimates where one wants to maintain a blurred BG. On a scene like this where normal DOF will encompass the entire subject stacking seems like nothing but more work and to satisfy the diffraction snobs who seem to get their panties in a wad for anything shot above f11 .
Even though the vandalism is regrettable I do think it improved the image. This is a marvelous find and a superb capture and presentation.>=))>
I have done extensive stacking on small studio scenes such as flowers so I thought it might be good to try it on this scene. It didn’t really seem worth it, as you said. Thank you for your kind comments. I appreciate them.
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