Mushrooms with bokeh

Saturday 30 October 2021, 20:10 by Erik Nevels | 4,524 views | 4 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Mushrooms can be found all year round. Yet autumn is the season par excellence for looking for them. That is why I have regularly been in the woods in recent weeks, searching for beautiful specimens.

I mainly searched along the edges of the woods so I could place the mushrooms against the light. When the light shines through the leaves, you get surprising bokeh spots in the background.

Close to the ground

It is easiest when the mushroom is growing on a fallen trunk or branch. That gives me room to point the camera more upwards and include more of the sky in the background.

But no matter how much I search today, I only find mushrooms on the ground. That calls for 'placing the camera flat on the ground'. I even remove my L-bracket to get a little lower. At last, some bokeh appears in the background on my screen, although it is still quite high up.

Digging a hollow to place the camera even lower is going too far for me, so from this position I refine my image. Camera slightly to the left or perhaps to the right. I keep shifting it until I am happy with the composition, and especially with the visible bokeh.

The balls are now visible in line with the two mushrooms, and I like that. To be sure, I focus again and the timer counts down to two before the shot is taken.

Sony A7 mark III, 90mm Macro, f/5.0, shutter speed 1/6s, ISO 100

Viewpoint

It is a week later and the sun has already climbed some way into the sky when I leave the path and walk into the woods. I remember this spot in the Munnichsbos from last year. Back then, I found a large fallen beech branch with lots of porcelain mushrooms growing on it.

I am curious whether they will be there again this year. Soon I see dozens of glistening mushrooms. There are so many this year, and I am right on time.

Most still have a rounded cap. Only a few specimens have already opened up and are fairly flat, with the beautiful gills characteristic of porcelain mushrooms on the underside. To photograph those gills, I need to be able to shoot from right underneath, so the mushrooms need to be growing suitably 'high' up.

I want to come back in a few days, when more caps have opened further. Today I choose the rounded early stages.

Bokeh

Because the branch is fairly close to the edge of the woods, daylight easily comes through the canopy. When I get that light behind the subject, the bokeh automatically appears in your viewfinder.

Before I start working from a tripod, I walk around first and try out several compositions. Which mushrooms should be placed against which background?

That turns out not to be an easy choice. There are so many of them, so which ones do you choose? In the end, a fly helps me along. Little creatures on the mushroom add something extra to the photo. That is why I quickly get my tripod and hope the fly will be patient with me.

Perhaps it is because of the slimy surface of the porcelain mushroom. Whatever the reason, the fly stays put and while I secure the camera in the desired position, I can decide which aperture to choose.

Do I choose the widest aperture, resulting in larger and rounder bokeh? Or do I go for a smaller aperture with more depth of field and smaller, more angular bokeh? I decide on the latter because I want both the fly and the large mushroom behind it to be sharp.

I increase the ISO a little so I do not make my shutter speed too slow. Then I focus on the fly and the self-timer takes the first shot after 2 seconds.

Sony A7 mark III, 90mm Macro, f/9.0, shutter speed 1/30s, ISO 800

And so I did

A few days later I return to the porcelain mushrooms and many of the rounded caps have opened. That creates a completely different image. Before I start looking close to the ground to photograph the mushrooms from underneath, I search for some more attractive bokeh in the background.

I soon see that some brown leaves in the background produce beautiful light brown bokeh. I am about to get my tripod when a fly visits my planned subject and walks across the cap. In that case, no tripod.

The aperture is already set to f/2.8, the ISO to 100 and the shutter speed to 1/500 second. That is fine for handheld photography. All I need now is luck. Will the fly sit in the right place?

I am patient and take several photos in the meantime. Then the little creature crawls to the tip of the mushroom. That is where I want it. I point the camera so it sits exactly inside a bokeh bubble, focus and press the shutter button. The next moment, the fly has almost walked out of the frame. Will that one shot have worked?

Sony A7 mark III, 90mm Macro, f/2.8, shutter speed 1/500s, ISO 100

Playing with bokeh

The longer I photograph, the easier I find it to create bokeh. Large balls, small balls, beautifully round or slightly less round, they give the photo an extra dimension. Surely, who does not like seeing a fly in the spotlight!

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