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After a less than stellar sunrise attempt at Manly; Gerry, Suren and I headed to Lane Cove Bushland Park to try our hand at macro fungi work.

At the start we had quite a bit of trouble finding any decent specimens to photograph - by the end we were finding whole groves of interesting fungi - either our searching skills had improved or we'd wandered into a better place

I used my LED macro ring light along with my SB900 shot through a popup around the lens diffuser to provide fill and in all of the following images Suren provided some additional back or top light using an LED torch.

In this first Suren is lighting the green leaves in the distance from behind to provide the separating background - not enough depth of field on this one however...



Same situation here except the light is more directional back towards the camera to also backlight the red semi translucent fungi itself - a woodland faerie scene...



My favourite - a lone translucent fungi in a forest of green mini fern being lit from above like a ray of sun



The LED macro light proved useful again - if nothing else for the excellent help it gave to seeing focus in the very dark conditions in the undergrowth.

I'm definitely keen for a repeat visit.

NB: I notice no-one has bothered processing or posting anything from the sunrise at Manly yet

The lighting on the second one is absolutely epic, the pre-made background and the back lighting works very well, the choice of ferns is poor any fungi expert (which i now am ) knows they don't grow on ferns a moss slab would have been better - nonetheless minor detail.

FYI, the red ones are "Hygrocybe miniata"

The last is very nice too, just shows the subtle addition of the torch light makes all the difference..

An interesting side point, i wonder whether right handed people tend to use negative space on the left and the subject on the right, or whether its a natural brain function resulting from reading left to right..

biggerry wrote:The lighting on the second one is absolutely epic, the pre-made background and the back lighting works very well, the choice of ferns is poor any fungi expert (which i now am ) knows they don't grow on ferns a moss slab would have been better - nonetheless minor detail.

Thanks Gerry - Suren and I spent a bit of time trying to perfect this and Next time - Suren can harvest some moss

FYI, the red ones are "Hygrocybe miniata"

The last is very nice too, just shows the subtle addition of the torch light makes all the difference..

Thats all Suren

#2 is also my favourite because of the contrasting colors. Lovely set design as well.

Remorhaz wrote:Suren and I spent a bit of time trying to perfect this and Next time - Suren can harvest some moss

I have an idea for a flash mod based on this expeirence.

biggerry wrote:FYI, the red ones are "Hygrocybe miniata"
.

WTF?? What are you....a fun guy now? I thought that was Colin's job.

surenj wrote:

biggerry wrote:FYI, the red ones are "Hygrocybe miniata"
.

WTF?? What are you....a fun guy now? I thought that was Colin's job.

man i know my sh$t now... seriously i was just checking out the fungi that can kill ya..of which there was none that we saw that day..

The last two are great Rodney.
I really need to get to this site some time.