“You’re not a man, you’re a mushroom!”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Sometimes, the simple things in life reveal the true beauty of the world around us. Such I often find with mushrooms, oft overlooked denizens of the forest floor and other opportunistic locations.
How this photo came to be
Those of you, who read the latest post in my series on how I learned photography, will not be surprised that this was a purely happenstance find, as I was photographing an agility trial that day. In between events, I sauntered through the neighboring woods and chanced upon this beautiful specimen; this is where awareness of one’s surroundings really pays off.
Getting down to its level gave me a beautiful view, particularly with the light coming from the left and the muted, darker tones of the forest floor behind it. A shallow depth of field really separated the mushroom from its surroundings, so it was just a matter of not over-exposing the shot to get it the way I wanted it to look.
One minor confession: I did remove a pine needle or two that were just in the wrong place…
For the inquisitive photographers among you, I will update this post with the EXIF data, when I get back to the source file, but I can tell you that this was shot with a Canon 70-200mm F2.8 lens.
Leave a Reply