Rains bring…Shrooms!
We’ve had some great fall weather here on the coast, but we’ve also had some heavy rains. This time of year, that means the mushrooms are popping up everywhere. It takes a special breed of “nut” to go out and photograph these bizarre and wonderful forms. It means setting up a tripod, very low to the ground, kneeling in a range of awkward positions on soggy ground, and usually making multiple images to get enough depth-of-field, while inches from the subject.
Amanita Muscaria is one of my favorite subjects, wonderful form and color, makes them irresistable! This group included 2 that have just broken the surface, still with their protective coating and one in the background with full brilliant color! This required 10 images to get it all in focus, using Photoshop’s stacking ability to combine the images. The 16 bit tiff image with all 10 layers was rather large at 1.25Gb, the new computer handled it easily.
A very strange alien invaded our greenhouse this year! The local experts think it is a mutated boletus type mushroom, but we are still researching. This is just a 4 image stack.
It had some great forms and textures, with desert southwest colors that reminded me of Canyonlands.
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