Many things which some might view as hassles are in fact what make the process of stalking mushrooms for fungi watercolor art appealing, while other difficulties and technical problems are and always will be just simple drudgery and trouble. There is a certain practical challenge involved in squirming into a moldy patch of forest debris while chasing the perfect angle on a little mycena, but being up close in the natural environment of that mushroom is its own reward too. While that may be true, as soon as it comes time to change a camera lens, the drudgery and trouble appears in force. When you are out hunting pictures of mushrooms, not only is there often plenty of mud, dust and debris, but there are always lots of fungus spores on the ground and stirred up into the air. It's like a macroscopic encounter with quantum mechanics - because the act of capturing the mushrooms photograph sets the state of the subject. Unfortunately, the fungus spores would like nothing better than to settle inside a camera body or inside the bellows of a lens mechanism.
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 05
Many things which some might view as hassles are in fact what make the process of stalking mushrooms for fungi watercolor art appealing, while other difficulties and technical problems are and always will be just simple drudgery and trouble. There is a certain practical challenge involved in squirming into a moldy patch of forest debris while chasing the perfect angle on a little mycena, but being up close in the natural environment of that mushroom is its own reward too. …
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 09
While not the case for mushroom art prints, for the purpose of mushroom identification and mycology studies, it is perfectly acceptable and in many circumstances absolutely essential to pick the mushroom. If the mushroom is growing so that the gills are not visible, or if one needs to take a spore print, or if one needs to examine the base of the mushroom stem to determine if it is tapered or bulbous, one often can't do any of that satisfactorily without picking the mushroom. …
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 13
Sometimes it is best to use the scene's natural light, although this kind of low light photography (particularly under a dense forest canopy) can be difficult. Sometimes it is beneficial to augment natural lighting conditions with a remote flash or a macro flash to complement (or even overcome) the natural lighting and make the perfect art print. …
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 06
Why is it that taking pictures of mushrooms presents a special challenge for someone wanting to make mushroom watercolor giclee art from these images? Well, it is a mix of technical, personal, and practical reasons. Many of these challenges are unique to …
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 16
I do not intend my mushroom art photographs and prints to be used for mushroom identification, and, although I am often tempted, I do not indulge in mushroom picking. In the final mushroom art print, I want to present an interpretation of the mushroom which reflects the state and environment in which I found it. …
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 14
There is no question that from a purely mechanical and practical standpoint, mushroom picking can make mushroom photography a technically much easier process. However, in addition to physically disturbing the delicate natural features of the mushroom's natural micro-environment, and risking inflicting physical damage upon the mushroom itself, mushroom picking disrupts the scene's natural composition. …
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 12
My mushroom photography for my mushroom art prints is most often not so much mycological photography of the mushrooms themselves as it is photography of the mushroom micro-environment and the surroundings there. Each mushroom photograph uses a mushroom as either the emotional focus or the primary visual focus of the print, but the mushroom itself may be not of much use to a mycology expert. …
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 10
Especially for the wild mushroom fine art giclee prints taken of fungi living on the forest floor such as that of the great California coastal redwood forests. The mushroom photographs taken there almost always show aspects of the life cycle of the redwood forest as well as their own. In those pictures there seems to always creep in some of the characteristic organic litter of the redwood forest or the mushrooms themselves in the pictures are growing from a log or fallen redwood branch. …
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 15
If you chose to do so, you certainly could set out to make a fungi art gallery out of the actual fungus mycelia which produce the mushroom fruit bodies, but then you would miss out on all the great mushrooms the mycelia produce. Taking pictures to create that kind of a fungi gallery would be more like taking pictures to create a rose gallery of rose stems, roots, and petals, instead of a gallery of rose blossoms. …
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 11
The forest provides absolutely everything required by the fungi mycelium. The decaying organic debris of the forest gives the mycelium all the nutrients it will need throughout its life. The organic litter gives it the nourishment it needs to fruit and to yield the beautiful mushrooms you see in the mushroom giclee prints like The Sage and in the …
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 08
A mushroom picture really only reveals a little bit about the life of the fungus mycelium which produces the mushroom fruit body you see in the picture. A snapshot of the life of the fungus is really a good term. Because the mushroom itself is merely the fruiting body of the mycelium, taking a mushroom picture shows a snapshot in time - of the time when the mycelium is fruiting, which may sometimes be very brief in a given season. …
Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 17
The mycelium which is fruiting and producing the mushrooms at the time of a mushroom picture may be anything from a relatively new fungus growth to a much older, established fungus. A well established fungus mycelium may stretch over great areas underground or throughout the mass of a rotting stump or log. It is particularly dramatic to imagine the hidden mycelium of a fungus in a huge redwood stump or log where one sees them within the vestiges of the old growth redwood forests and within the remains of the forests left after decades of ruthless logging. …