High Maintainance Mushroom

[best appreciated at full size against black]

Some mushrooms would really rather be left alone, and if you insist, they will make your life very difficult if you try to take their picture! This one was discovered growing on the underside of a log. This log was on a steep, muddy hillside. To get this picture, I had to unmount my camera from the tripod and place it on my version of a sandbag...a ziplock-covered bag of powdered sugar! However, in order to look through the viewfinder, I literally had to turn my head upside-down and keep my balance. I ended up taking about 20 shots of this, and in the end, this was the best of them. I really liked the depth of field with just a sliver along the lip being really sharp, and the rest falling off into blur. The problem was that this stinker was right up against the log and I didn't have enough distance for proper bokeh. I almost gave up on this one until I remembered the textures people sometimes use for a problem image. With some work and a couple of different textures applied at various opacities, I finally arrived at an image that I'm happy with. I tried to create a feeling of the mushroom fading into foggy background. What do you think? I hope you like my first experiment with textures!

*textures by Heather Green Photography and Alice Popkorn2

This image was taken in February, 2012.