Fungi Photo Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet 12

Mushroom Art for Sale by Artist C Ribet

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. In some cases, the mushroom is a very small feature of the overall image presented in the ultimate mushroom art print, for example, in the two giclees shown at Gallery California, Mute Ovation and Impasse. In Mute Ovation the little mushroom is clearly the emotional focus of the print, but it is far from the dominating feature of the print. On the other hand, in Impasse, one might say the small band of adventuring mushrooms are the dominating feature, but they are nonetheless diminutive and tiny against the dramatic backdrop of their environment.


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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. …

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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. …

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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. …

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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. …

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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


© C Ribet 2013