Pictured One

On The Fine Art Of Taking Awesome Mushroom Pictures

One of the best parts of mushroom hunting is taking mushroom pictures. I’ve been identifying wild mushrooms for around a decade now, and my collection of mushroom pictures continues to grow with every mushroom hunting season. At first my mushroom pictures were pretty poor quality. Back then I was just taking mushroom pictures to help me try to casually identify in my wild mushroom field guides at home, or maybe to show off to a friend. Who knew that so many years later, I would have developed specific skill-set taking high quality mushroom pictures in the wild? Lucky for you I can teach you how to take great mushroom pictures and save you the many years of trial and error!

However, it’s vitally important to note that using your mushroom pictures to identify your wild mushrooms is far from proper, safe mushroom identification methods, and you should never eat any wild mushrooms that you haven’t performed a careful and precise identification for. Many wild edible mushrooms have poisonous look-a-likes that are so similar in appearance to the untrained eye, that using just a couple of mushroom pictures as your main identifying data could end up as a case of mushroom poisoning, or worse. Always remember, if in doubt throw it out!

Taking good mushroom pictures truly is an art, and requires some instruction and advice on how to take good mushroom pictures. You’d be surprised at how attached you will start to become to all of your mushroom pictures as your collection grows. I’ve shared mine over my Facebook account for a few years now, and while it probably led a few mycophobic folks to block my posts, I know for a fact that by sharing my mushroom pictures, I’ve opened a few of my friends minds up to the beauty of wild mushrooms. Much like wildflowers, wild mushrooms crop up in a rainbow of colors, shapes and sizes and present a great opportunity for taking artistic mushroom pictures as art works. It sure is more interesting than sitting at a table painting a bowl of fruit and a loaf of bread!

How to Take High Quality Mushroom Pictures

The first thing you need to take mushroom pictures is of course a camera. You don’t necessarily need a top of the line digital slr camera to take top notch mushroom pictures. I get by with two cheap digitial cameras, a Fujifilm A700, and a Canon A1000s. Both take high quality pictures for very affordable prices. I wouldn’t advise using a non-digitial camera for the simple reason that film is both expensive to buy and to develop. Having your mushroom pictures developed will cost more than the near free-ness of using a digital camera to snap off as many mushroom pictures as your heart desires.

Use the Macro Setting To Take Highly Detail Mushroom Pictures

Once you have found a mushroom you would like to take a picture of, the first thing you need to do is set you digital camera to its Macro setting. Most digital cameras have this setting (refer to your user manual). This setting allows you to position your camera very close to your specimen, taking mushroom pictures with high degrees of detail, making it far easier to verify the identity of what you found by using the pics you snapped off during your mushroom hunt.

The Art of Taking Mushroom Pictures: Getting Down and Dirty

Next, as you might have guess, you need to get down as close to the mushroom as possible. Don’t be shy to get down on your hands and knees if you need to, and try to move any sticks, dead leaves or random brush away from your mushroom. Just watch out for poison ivy, snakes, skunks or other critters of the wild. It’s a good idea to carry a walking stick long enough to push leaves and branches out of your way without having to physically touch anything while setting up your mushroom pictures.

Experiment With Different Angles to Get Better Mushroom Pictures

Now, move your camera around the mushroom and experiment with angles while looking at the display screen on the camera. Fool around until you can see that your mushroom picture is in focus, is centered, and that the lighting isn’t either too dark or too light. The wrong kind of lighting can totally ruin a mushroom picture, throwing off the coloring and the detail. While there are several more technical solutions to this problem, my main way of getting around it is to try to take my mushroom pictures during mid-afternoon to later afternoon when the sunlight seems to bring out the best in natural colors.

Barring taking your mushroom pictures during peak lighting hours, you can also position your body to block light, or perhaps bring a 5 x 7 inch white note card to help reflect light back at the mushroom. Sometimes though, no matter how hard you try, the lightning just won’t be right to truly capture your mushroom. My advice to this: don’t be lazy and go back the next day during better lighting times! Don’t put this off more than a day though, or you are likely to return to a big pile of mushy goo!

Don’t Be Shy! Take LOTS of Mushroom Pictures!

Lastly, take several shots of every mushroom you are trying to photograph. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come back home to find 4 out of 5 of my mushroom pictures for a particular mushroom I found are blurry, or the lighting is off. At least usually I took enough pictures of each mushroom to get at least one high quality mushroom picture in the end. Increase your odds of coming home with high quality mushroom pictures by snapping off more pics! It’s digital so who cares how many pictures you take? Take a bazillion mushroom pictures if you feel like it, no one’s counting!

About the Author

With nearly a decade of experience mushroom hunting for wild edible mushrooms, as well as many years practice taking mushrooms pictures, I felt like it was time to start sharing what I’ve enjoyed so passionately over the years for this weird yet wonderful hobby called mushroom hunting…not to mention all these hundred of mushroom pictures I have no taken!

Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years.

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