Garlic Mushrooms – Two Versions

A few weeks ago, I photographed garlic mushrooms (Marasmius copelandii) at Big Basin. Garlic mushrooms are very tiny mushrooms that grow only on dead, fallen tanoak leaves.

I took this shot with a 180 mm macro lens and a 1.4x tele-extender, on my Canon 1Ds Mark II. Even though I thought the picture was not bad, it wasn't quite what I had in mind. With the wind, and the play of light, and various circumstances, I just didn't manage to get quite what I wanted.



I left, a bit frustrated with myself, that I had failed to come up with a fully mature vision of this, and failed to create "The Picture" of it that satisfied me.

Shortly after leaving, I realized that what I wanted for this was to make a version that was backlit by flash – everything illuminated with light from behind, all the edges aglow, and the background dark. I returned, a week later, found the same leaf out in the woods, and re-shot this picture with an off-camera flash behind it.



Happy holidays.

http://naturography.com

Mike,

The stalks of the transilluminated fungus now come to life. The two of them appear to socially respond to each other as a dancing couple. There are fine strands between them, either hyphi or perhaps a spiders web? Still the lines join the dancers together. (Is there an insect on the top of the left stalk too?)

The mushroom part of the fungus looks very different in this light. The former pictures while interesting, have a limited range of detail given up by the lighting. The back-flash lit new picture shows a complexity and richness wherein the volume and grandeur of this magnificent spore platform, replete petal-like segments made from some layered process of molten glass. There's elegance! Now we look at the base and we see the picture is secured by the serrated edge of the dead tanoak leaves.

If I could ask for something more, and I have no right to do so, it would be for some more black space. This picture can take more. If this is a crop, then I'd return back more of the base leaf in an alternate, additional presentation. Doubtless you have many more pictures from this shoot. I hope you'll share more.

Now how many other folk noticed these delicate life forms, recycling the energy and materials of the oak? These beautiful things are all around us. Thanks, Mike for helping us realize what we be aware of!

Asher

Iterative photography: what other approaches to making this picture did you consider?

The need to work at great new ideas since they almost never are made into a deliverable picture as first framed or imagined.

Allow me to address the subject of creative iteration.

This set of pictures you have shown of your attempt to make your concept of galric mushroom stalks into a photograph worthy of attention, is important for us. It's a clear and honest demonstration of the needed effort to materialize unique concepts. This is what I plead with Rachel about. It requires allowing the first results to talk to you and knowing that we also are able to face the failure and humiliation of being so clumsy. With Rachel's melting icicle, she failed to put into a shareable image anything close to what she had in mind. Still, the subject, as in your first shot here of the thin mushroom, is certainly exotic and fascinating, but not for long.

Great artistic subjects, like great ideas in general, are "ten a penny"; it's execution that's always the stumbling block.

However, a lot of our work is predictable. That's when one does what one's trained to do and repeats that many times over, as in shooting weddings. The reasonable similarity of each occasion, (despite seemingly disparate looks of the couple and location), enables a fairly predictable workflow where one can pretty well guarantee success.

Here, in attempting to express in a physical form your fascination with the thin stands of garlic mushroom, you have only dissimilar wild plants and flowers in your mental library. So, there's no pre-packaged approach to this one set of unique objects. This is as it should be. You can have you own hallmark style, but the approach must be tailored to your concept. Unfortunately, we do not see completely as Beethoven heard the music in his head before it was written. We have to first get the idea out as best we can and then reconsider based on our initial efforts. Every parameter has to be fought for. This is a good lesson for anyone getting a good idea and not being able to see it in their work, despite having a great camera, lighting and lens.

Mike, what other ideas were you toiling with to solve this problem and in the end how did you achieve the flash effect you needed to achieve this fine result.

Thanks, Asher.

The strands between them are spiderwebs. Someone suggested to me to digitally remove the spiderwebs, but – beside the fact that I prefer not to alter my pictures like that – I like the spiderwebs. For me, it gives a feeling of connectedness to the two mushrooms, as you noted.

The thing on the top of the left stalk is a little bit of fluff. I'm not sure what it is – perhaps part of a feather or an air-dispersed seed (like dandelion).

I also agree that the lighting in the second picture brings out the definition of the mushroom's gills, and draws greater attention to the serrated edges of the leaves.

For me, the backlighting both removes all of the elements that I consider extraneous to the composition, stripping it down the elegant and important shapes and lines, while adding more sense of form and structure, and also displaying the mushrooms and leaf powerfully.

These pictures are slightly cropped; I will consider the suggestion to give them more black space.

The flash was attached to the camera by a flash cable. I held the flash in one hand, about a foot behind and a few inches above the mushrooms, and took the picture with a remote trigger cable in the other hand. I had little idea what would be the right amount of flash for backlighting these, so I experimented with a few different power settings, until I nailed it.

As for the development of the concept, and the other ideas along the way:

I started out photographing large clusters of mushrooms growing on individual leaves:



While I do think showing that has worth, I came to decide I wanted smaller, more intimate groupings, and wanted them lit from behind.



Then I realized I wanted mushrooms/leaves which had everything straighter and more in a sinlge plane, so I could get everything within the depth of field, and I also wanted the small groupings to have mushrooms which could be photographed without any overlap. And I wanted to find pair or a small group that ... "looked right, together" – that complemented each other. (I hope that makes sense.) That's where the first picture in this thread comes in.

Mike, I have enjoyed studying this series. It's the last one that really holds my attention.

Thank you, Winston.

This reminds me of a group of dancers on the stage! We have to reference to something, that how we measure all things we see. It's the sum of all the measurements that gives identity. Here I see social interaction and it's very pleasing.





The angular positioning of the stems gives some sense of purpose as if these are people reacting to each other. Delightful but a very different esthetic from the backlit pictures you post originally.


As I mentioned with Cem's picture in the museum, when a photograph conveys a concepts or invites on to roll ones own, so to speak, then all the technical questions one might have tend to vanish for the moment.

Asher

Hi Mike

These are wonderful, you must have a lot of patience to be able to get these, I know that if I were to attempt this it would take a lot of work to get these results, thanks for the inspiration......

These last two shots are fascinating photos, Mike. I agree with Asher too.
My most favourite is this last one though - the light, angle, composition, colour and subject makes for a beautiful picture, its a stunner for me.