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Fungi - Lighting Criticism Sought

What followis is an image of a cluster of mushrooms, perhaps Coprinus sp., and I would appreciate any critical thoughts on the lighting. Is it too diffuse? Too harsh? Would you like to see the main light from another direction? Or whatever constructive criticism you may have.

On a technical note, this shot is straight flash using a 550 EX in full manual on wireless diffused via a 12x16 inch softbox. A watering can was used to apply water to the mushroom caps and create the few droplets as I cannot find my mister/spray bottle.



thanks,

Sean
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Sean,

I have a questions about processing from RAW and sharpening as well as lighting.

This, might benefit from processing the top of the mushrooms separately as they take the light differently as they come to an almost cone point.

The picture may be oversharpening and could benefit perhaps fron slectively sharpening as different zones:

b.g: slight, perhaps local as in 15 % 25 pixels in PS unsharp mask.

stems and main mushroom : moderate

granular area of tip of mushrooms a tiny bit more

side of mushroom towards new lateral light tine bit more with feathering of say 20 pixels

Lighting: I'd try to light this at dawn with the sun just having risen or at sunset just before it sinks. I'd use a reflecter or very low flash to add more to one side if needed.

Asher
 

Don Lashier

New member
Sean DeMerchant said:
would appreciate any critical thoughts on the lighting. Is it too diffuse? Too harsh? Would you like to see the main light from another direction?
Nice shot Sean. In this case, I think less DOF would be nice. I'd do without the flash entirely and as Asher commented try and get early or late natural lighting from the front or side, maybe with a very slight fill.

Are these edible?

- DL
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Don Lashier said:
Nice shot Sean..........................
Are these edible?

- DL
Hello Sean,

Sean, wake up! Come on, turn over, I know you're alive!

OMG, you didn't eat the bloody stuff!

Too bad! I'm so sorry!

Such a fine guy, living on his Island.

What a loss!

Well, that means no more mushroom pictures!

Asher
 

Ray West

New member
Without looking it up, I thought mushrooms were edible, toadstools were not, or is it like mutton and sheep, beef and cow, originated from different languages. I think I would call these toadstools.

Best wishes,
Ray
 
You generally can't tell edible mushrooms from indedible mushrooms by simple inspection. All mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of an underground network of thread-like substance. Some poisonous mushrooms advertise their poison (deathcap Amanita for example), some don't. Here's a good explanation of the difference between mushroom and toadstool.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toadstool
 

Ray West

New member
Hi Charles,

Thanks for the link, I guess it depends where you are from, and where you are now. From the wiki site it links to http://www.fungibank.csiro.au/topic_2_5.htm, its 'strictest sense' lines up with my understanding, although I would include the puff ball as a mushroom, because you can eat them, at least the ones I've eaten. A lot of folklore associated with toadstools, 'fairy stories', father christmas, flying rendeer, witches broomsticks, etc. (due to ingesting certain varieties, by various methods)

Best wishes,

Ray
 
Asher Kelman said:
I have a questions about processing from RAW and sharpening as well as lighting.

This, might benefit from processing the top of the mushrooms separately as they take the light differently as they come to an almost cone point.

The picture may be oversharpening and could benefit perhaps fron selectively sharpening ...

I agree it needs refinement. The posted example was scripted sharpened JPEG prep and I am not happy with it. I can put up the RAW file if anyone wants to take at try. But my interest was the lighting. I am in general happy with the composition based on what was there.

Asher Kelman said:
Lighting: I'd try to light this at dawn with the sun just having risen or at sunset just before it sinks. I'd use a reflecter or very low flash to add more to one side if needed.

Sadly, that does not work well in the PNW. And here on Whidbey Island during mushroom season such light is very hit or miss as it requires atmospheric diffusion via light cloud cover due to the sun rising and setting behind mountain ranges. Add in that the best mushroom locales get little direct light during the day and that mushrooms grow best on socked in and rainy days and you start to see why I want to improve my flash technique to a new level.

And once you start on forest rather than lawn mushroom specimens natural light is almost impossible to get good light for mushroom capture due to the grey days we get when the fungi grow up here.

Add in the physical factor of lying on your stomach on the ground and natural light with a tripod becomes a severe challenge when millimeters are a major factor in camera placement and you may see why I choose to use diffused flash and a reflector.

In other terms, I am seeking to improve my flash based shooting technique to capture things that cannot be done with a tripod. Part of this is that I cannot get a 1/200 second exposure at f/14 with a tripod short of ISO 1600 and with flash I can do this nearly noise free at ISO 100 with the real exposure an order of magnitude shorter. I have been working at this for years and now that I finally have quality glass changing a technique that works well is not on my priority list.

Part of this is that I know I could create spectacular images with a $5 USD disposable flash camera and optical slaves triggering flashes or studio strobes. After all, if the light is right, then the camera matters little. And, in the end, when fungi are commonly visible here in the PNW the light sucks.

enjoy,

Sean
 
Don Lashier said:
Nice shot Sean. In this case, I think less DOF would be nice. I'd do without the flash entirely and as Asher commented try and get early or late natural lighting from the front or side, maybe with a very slight fill.

Are these edible?

Thanks Don. :eek:)

While I would like to have nice soft natural light and a reflector, the fact here is that in the Pacific North Wet* the fungi tend to grow most visisbly when the lighting is way too diffuse (clouds from horizon to horizon).

As to the DoF, I would prefer less in terms of background defocus but not in terms of subject focus. My standard technique for mushrooms in the grass is to use my boke scissors** but in this situation the background behind the subject rose over 35 cm rather rapidly making that technique untenable. Consider the lighting setup below.

SPE29402_RSE_01.jpg


The Lighting Setup

Hence in this cas I had to add additonal dandelion leaves to make the defocus uniform rather than prune away the background as was done in the shot below:

SPE28369_RSE_01.jpg


Coprinus comatus, the shaggy mane, in the grass. Extensive selective gardening was done to craft the defocus and the leaf was added. Personally, I find the JPEG shown oversharpened and it will likely be replaced in the near future (i.e., image critique is unstable).

As to them being edible, I just shoot them and consider them all to be on par with deathcap mushrooms. The only ones I have eaten that I picked myself were from a kit (some delightful oyster mushrooms).

enjoy,

Sean




** The scissors I use for selective gardening of the forground and background to retain DoF while simulating DoF separation by grossly mowing the grass down.


* Intentionally misspelled.
 
Asher Kelman said:
Hello Sean,

Sean, wake up! Come on, turn over, I know you're alive!

OMG, you didn't eat the bloody stuff!

Too bad! I'm so sorry!

Hi Asher,

I agree, eating unknown fungi is very bad form (if not downright idiotic). I just shoot them. Though it makes me laugh every time I ask rangers and such where to find them and they give me limits or say picking them is off limits even though all I want to take home is photos.

Albeit, what this really says is I need yet another book filled with fungi shots so I can quickly disspell thoughts of violation and show appreciation of beauty so that I might get people to share secrets more easily.

enjoy,

Sean
 
Ray West said:
Without looking it up, I thought mushrooms were edible, toadstools were not, or is it like mutton and sheep, beef and cow, originated from different languages. I think I would call these toadstools.

This is like saying beetles are bugs which is vernacular but wrong. Beetles are insects and true bugs (i.e., stink bugs) are insects. But beetles are not bugs and bugs are not beetles. But, both beetles and bugs are insects. Similarly pill/potato bugs are neither bugs nor insects, but are more properly terrestrial arthropods with their more similar species dwelling in the sea. Similarly, spiders are not insects. Spiders are arachnids which are terrestrial arthropods.

In other terms, common language and technical identification of species do not correlate. Consider the statement that "spiders, beetles, bees, and other bugs ..." sounds reasonable while being technically wrong.

For a more apropo example, consider Aminita muscaria, a.k.a. fly agaric. Some consider Aminita muscaria a hallucinogenic mushroom which is edible. Others are aware its intoxication is short lived while its stress upon the liver is long lived. The latter character makes it poisonous despite being a mushroom. Fungi is one place where I want expert identification before consumign them. But it is still fun to look and shoot regardless of the ID.

enjoy,

Sean
 
Dierk Haasis said:
Just wanted to say that I like the image as it is.

Thanks Dierk. :eek:) Which still leaves how to take the lighting to the next level. I know composition can be better, but the light is what enables crafting the compositions.

enjoy,

Sean
 

Dierk Haasis

pro member
OK, you asked for it ...

"Better" lighting can only be achieved by knowing what one wants to show, what aspect the author thinks is central to the picture. Which is why very often the artist is much more sceptic about his achievements than the viewer. It is also one of the reasons an author should abstain from interpreting his own works.

In another time and another thread Mary showed us a mushroom hat shot from straight above. Somebody [too lazy to look who] suggested to show more of the stalk - which would have been a completely different image. The same holds here. Obviously there's something to the photo enamoring you enough to put it up for public scrutiny. A step that calls out for negative* criticism telling you what to do to get it "better".

Very often my comments on posted photos have been in that vain, analysing the picture and making suggestions on how to fix the mistakes. In a moment of personal enlightenment - something like 'thunderbolt city' - I found your photo very well done when I first saw it. Over the past few days I visited it a few times more and still found that there is nothing to be done to it. Perhaps a bit of sharpening, slight correction of saturation depoending on output but nothing to the image itself.

Lighting is not hierarchical, there is no next level, no step up, no better. Experience tells me that many artists started out with one light source, developed ever more complex lighting situations over their lifetime - and ended up coming back to one simple source. There's technical as well as natural reasons for that; the technical being that it is easier to handle one light than an army of them. We shouldn't forget that we only have one natural light source, we are used to it, we actually evolved with it [= it's what we understand best].

Among the rulings of photography is the 'avoid harsh light'. Why? It's a matter of subject and intent. Look at many Westerns (i.e. John Ford's), which make use exactly of the harsh sunlight during the day. For those not liking Westerns, a whole film genre was built around expressionist use of dark shadows and very bright lights, the film noir. Several times during the audio commentaries for Sam Peckinpah's Westerns the critics involved lament the loss of this kind of lighting Lucien Ballard used very often.

Your photo, now, uses a scattered, soft light witout blown highlights or deep shadows. And it becomes the subject at hand. Why go for a "better" lighting? Which one should it be, deeper shadows below with blinking waterdrops on the hats, or a golden tinged light from the side at a very low angle?

Let's look at it from a commercial perspective. Your photo would make a good - certainly better than most - illustration in a book on fungi. It can also be used in advertising [believe me, more than one and a half decades working in it] or in a magazine especially because the subject's light is at it is**.

Now, what is it you want to present? Find the answer and you know how the light has to be on the fungal fruits. Then you can ask about how to achieve this most efficiently.




*Technically it should read 'positive' but that would bring us into a disccussion on the differences between vernacular use and actual meaning of words.
**Against use in a magazine or advert: no space for text.
 
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