My wife and I went to a farmers market near our home last week. She’s a fabulous cook, and since I’m always looking for something different to photograph we go together. Well I found something new to photograph: mushrooms.
One of the vendors was a mushroom grower, and they had already been bought out. But they still had a small selection. They even had dried medicinal mushroom for sale that are supposed to be good for your health. After chatting with the farmers for a while and getting educated about what they do, we decided to buy a pound of blue oyster mushrooms. The clusters were beautiful, and I was instantly inspired.
When we got home I immediately started looking at the mushrooms and thinking about what I could do with them to make them an interesting subject. And I had to get the photos done before they became part of our dinner. Using the light from our front bay window I started by putting the cluster on a brown paper bag, turning them in the light to find the best angle from which to shoot them. Some angles emphasized the gills, and some the stems and caps. The beauty was definitely in the gills.
I spent about 20 minutes shooting the mushrooms—not much time at all—and I was done. I downloaded the images and edited them. Since the colors were all based on the light tan color of the mushrooms, I thought about just making the images monochrome—black and white or sepia. But I realized that part of the wonder of these beauties resides in their delicate coloration. So I kept the natural color, punching up the vibrancy just a little.
The result? A series of photos that are beautiful and somehow haunting. These remarkable fungi that grew from nearly-invisible spores became a stunning subject for me. The science of mushrooms impressed us so much that we are trying to grow our own now. We collected the spores from a couple of the mushroom caps, and we’ll see how it goes. We may have mushrooms for life now!
But back to the images. I probably spent less than an hour shooting and editing the photos. I love when that happens. It just shows you that everything you shoot doesn’t have to be a long and involved process. Sometimes you can come up with a concept, shoot quickly and you’re done. I like those sessions. It frees me up for the next idea!
...and in case you were wondering, dinner was delicious!