the family
Apr, 2014Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
Whenever it rains in the summer, these little guys pop out of the moss at the base of an old maple tree in my yard.Time
I always head to this tree when the rain slows down to find them. This day it happened to be in the afternoon.Lighting
I shoot almost exclusively with natural light when I'm doing outdoor macro work and this was no exception. The rain moved through and the sun came back out, so finding an angle with great light was pretty easy that day.Equipment
This was shot with an old Canon 50D, Canon100mm f2.8 macro lens on a tripod using a shutter release cable.Inspiration
I love mushrooms and an always looking for interesting formations. Finding these three, one on top of the other and graduated in size, like a little family, caught my eye.Editing
This was one of my first attempts at focus stacking. Other than that, I probably boosted the contrast a little and probably actually desaturated the greens a bit. It seems when shooting an already color saturated scene, and green moss in particular, the greens look almost unreal, so I tend to tone them down a little.In my camera bag
I couldn't live without my Canon 100mm f2.8 macro, Canon 135mm f2 L prime and the Canon EF-S 17-55 f2.8. I always have two spare batteries, charger, a variable ND filter and shutter release cable handy. And while I don't always have my tripod in my bag, it always travels with me.Feedback
Mushrooms are fascinating to me and one of the easiest subjects to photograph because they don't move around a lot, even on a breezy day. Finding the tiny ones can be challenging and I inevitably find myself lying on the damp ground, sometimes camera flipped upside down on the tripod, to get just the right angle. If my friends drive by my property and see me practically standing on my head, they know I've found an interesting little mushroom! I wanted all three of these to be in focus and since the focal plane is paper thin in macro work, I read up on focus stacking and have been using the technique ever since. A tripod, macro lens and cable release were the only equipment needed to capture the photo. They were stacked and processed in Photoshop.
