Mushrooms In The Forest
Fun With Cameras XLIII
I’ve never been much of a forest guy. My recent stumbles into local woodlands, which began rainy and uncertain what to do with the camera in my hand and began to feel more familiar despite a lack of happy results on my second attempt, are beginning to change my mind.
I’ll take you deeper into the woodlands in today’s third attempt. And I finally managed to put that tripod I nestled into my camera bag to use. Alongside the visual observations, I’ll also share a few peculiar social encounters.
The Tiny Mushroom
The end of a close-by (well, it’s a 20-minute walk, decide for yourself) tramline was my destination on a bland afternoon.
The 20-minute ride was a bit uncomfortable because the tram was densely packed with folks storming in and out of the carriage. I still need to get used to that again, I’m afraid.
Those close quarters opened the closer I got to the terminal stop. And I was all by myself for almost the entire walk, which lasted two and a half hours.
Peace. Quiet. Nature. Heaven.
The tram had shuttled me to a location cumbersomely named Broich-Speldorfer Wald. It’s the southern extension of the forest in Duisburg, which I know from childhood family walks and the occasional long run to the regatta course.
But the parts I write about today belong to the city of Mülheim.
My first impression: this is a proper forest. It felt noticeably quieter and more removed from the city than the places I visited before.
I found the first subject after a few minutes. I needed to convince myself to stop that early. I had an 8 km route prepared after all.
I stopped. The moss that covered the trees around me seemed to tell me so.
When I saw a tiny mushroom poking its head out from the moss, I was ready to get the camera out of the bag.
The macro lens was the obvious choice in this scenario. Still a little unsure of myself, I left the tripod in the bag and worked handheld for the first 10 images.
I liked what I could see in the viewfinder and decided to slow it down further. Tripod time.
I spent 17 minutes with this little guy.
The tripod presented challenges. I find it incredibly clunky to arrive at the composition I have in mind. The tree’s bulging roots didn’t help the matter.
Only back home did I realize I could have gotten closer.
While I don’t know the exact focusing distance, I must have been between 40 and 70 cm from the subject. At least that’s what the aperture values tell me (I had the lens wide open, and the closer you focus, the more the lens steps back from its maximum 2.8 aperture value. The Exif data also puts the focusing distance in that ballpark (though rumor has it that information is not necessarily accurate).
Long story short, I could have captured the mushroom a bit larger.
I don’t know if the surface conditions would have allowed for the necessary tripod placement, but I learned a lesson.
I’ve included my favorite (at f/10 with a shutter speed of 0.5 seconds) and three wider-aperture alternatives.
I was fascinated, just like the lady who inquired about what I had discovered while I packed the tripod. Human encounter number one.
Random Woodland Photography Finds
I met a handful more people along my way through the cloudy forest, from a tall woman beaming with happiness both times our paths crossed and a father and son mountain bike duo that headed into a narrow side path once I had clambered out of it, to a woman on a horse and two dog walkers whom I save for the next section.
I’m glad I prepared a route on my cycling computer, for I would probably have lost my way a few times over. I was still slightly confused when a path that showed on every map I consulted ended in front of thick shrubbery, and another path was simply nonexistent.
I stumbled over that mushroom image below in the narrow path described above. The solitary tree stood in an opening a few minutes from the first mushroom location.
The last two images are from my way out. Light levels had sunken significantly, but I tried a few fall foliage captures, even if the light was nothing special.
The close-up of the tree branch is one of my favorites. It was a rare moment of sunlight that reached the wood just at the right moment and place. I might have entertained breaking out the tripod again had it not been for the late hour.
The Stacked Mushrooms
I had used the tripod a second time more than half an hour earlier. A tree stump with mushroom decoration had lured me in. After a few handheld test shots, I set up the tripod with a special idea in mind. Why not try some focus stacking?
The fiddly manual labor took 20 minutes and earned me two more human encounters.
A concerned dog walker asked what I was photographing. “No birdies,” he asked with concern. Concern not for the birds, but he feared his dog and he had ruined a picture.
“What’s so special you found there?” another woman inquired in the middle of my second of two attempts at focus stacking. After I had responded with “nothing special, just some small mushrooms on a log,” she added that mushrooms indeed were special. While walking away, the lady chuckled and informed me that it just would look a bit odd seeing someone looking into what appeared to be “nothingness.”
Anyway, the focus stacks didn’t go to plan. But it was my first attempt. I still share them. I reckon I made life rather hard for myself because of the diagonally traveling depth of field. If I understand the Photoshop process correctly, I most likely could improve the results (especially in the second example) by painting the masks all by hand.
However, that’s a bit too much hassle for now. The manual tweaks to the Photoshop magic took long enough as is.
The first example is based on only 10 images — the focus adjustments were probably a good bit too coarse.
The second example is based on 22 images with fine adjustments. Fine enough? I don’t know. I eyeballed the changes in depth of field on the rear monitor while carefully turning the focus ring.
It’s a learning process (and one that requires much patience). But I’ll try again next time.
That’s all the photography for now. The next Fun With Cameras will follow only days after Christmas. I’ll have reading recommendations, writing progress, and a few lines on journalism next week.
