Fungi Photo Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 13

Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet

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. Whatever the technical details of lighting to get the pictues of mushrooms, the original natural scene composition which drew me at first glance is virtually always the scene which I will try to capture in the mushroom photographs destined to become fine art giclee mushroom fine art prints.


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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. …

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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. …

Fungi Photo 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. …

Fungi Photo 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. …

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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 fungi pictures from which all of the giclee mushroom prints are created.



© C Ribet 2013