While out hiking in the woods I often find myself bending down and investigating fungi of various forms along the trail. There’s just something fascinating about the variety and the interesting colors and patterns growing on other surfaces, sometimes on rocks or trees, sometimes from the forest floor.

In mid-January I happened upon a fungi-covered branch lying on a bed of brown fallen leaves. I loved the contrast between the darker leaves and the lighter branch and fungi. This type of fungi usually has layers of growth very similar to those of the trees they’re often found on, with different layers taking on slightly different colors. And this pattern really stood out against the haphazard pattern of fallen leaves and the straight pattern of tree bark.

So I bent down and found a couple compositions. In the horizontal image the branch has a bit of a curve to it. I liked how it was a slow curve that stretched just slightly over the width of the image. And for the vertical image I chose a straighter stretch of branch that I thought worked well with that orientation.

From a technical perspective I has shooting with a 16-35mm lens at 35mm. I was fairly close to the branch and hand-holding. I chose an aperture of f/8 to hopefully have enough depth of field to cover the scene. F/8 on this lens would normally be fine but the closer you get to a subject the smaller an aperture you need to keep it all in focus, and this lens lets you get pretty close. I pushed the ISO to 640 to let me use a shutter speed of 1/60 second, fast enough for me to hand-hold. Technically, it would have been better to use a tripod as then the ISO could have been lowered and the shutter speed wouldn’t have mattered as much, so I could have closed the aperture down even more. But I sometimes prefer the freedom of moving quickly so I’ll skip the tripod.

I have quite a few more photos of fungi I hope to share in the future, showing a little more of the variety you can find. It’s a subject I never tire of, and I hope this gives you a little more appreciation for these small wonders of nature.

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