Last month I came up with the most brilliant idea yet for photographing mushrooms. Ok, I didn’t really come up with it. It’s something I learned borrowed stole from a friend and fellow photographer named Don Paulson. One day he sent me an email with a picture attached. It was of a mushroom he came across during a walk in the woods. A fabulous picture with really great background. I initially though that he used one of his prints as a background, but as it turns out, it was actually a picture on his monitor.

I had to try this. So Bailey the Labradoodle and I went searching for mushrooms. It’s not hard to do as there are a lot of mushrooms out in the woods these days. I easily found mushrooms and brought some home in a plastic plant pot.

So here’s what you do: you’ll need the mushrooms (or whatever you’re photographing) to sit higher than the edge of the container. So I first filled the container nearly all the way with dirt and moss. Then it’s a matter of digging out the mushroom so that there’s enough of its surrounding dirt/moss/wood to support it. Place it at the top of the container so that when you’re photographing you can include the mushroom’s immediate surroundings but not the edge of the container.

At the computer, look through your catalog for pictures that can make a good background. I’ll sometimes bring my Canon G11 with me on my mushroom hunts and simply take a snapshot of the existing background.

Open the image in Photoshop and apply a Gaussian blur. You’ll have to play with it a bit to get a natural looking background. You can also zoom in to different areas of the picture. The point here is that you can control the background with the blur and yet use whatever depth of field you need (to a point–I’ll get to that) to get as much of the mushroom as sharp as you need it. I found that I often needed to increase the Gaussian blur because the depth of field I chose still revealed more background detail than I wanted.

Set your container with the mushrooms in front of your monitor. I placed it about a foot in front. I set my camera up on the tripod with my 105mm macro lens and framed it up. You may need some extra light indoors just to see what you’re doing and to make sure you’re focused where you want to be. A flashlight works fine if you don’t have a bright light in your room.

For exposure, I spot metered the background and took some test shots to get the background the way I wanted. Then I switched back to Matrix metering (Evaluative for you Canon shooters). To expose the mushroom I used my Nikon SB-800 flash pointed at the white ceiling. This bouncing of the flash makes for a nice diffused light source. You’ll have to play with the flash compensation to get the exposure you want on the mushroom. I was setting it at -1 to -2 most of the time.

Shutter speed will be determined by the background exposure you desire. If the background is too light, use a faster shutter speed to darken the background. If it’s too dark, add light with a slower shutter speed.

Aperture will be determined by a few factors. First, how much depth of field do you want? Second, flash exposure is dependent on two major things: aperture, and the distance between the subject and the flash. If you’ve set the aperture at f/22 your flash may not be able to put out enough light. So f/11 may need to be used. There are options here as well. Choosing a higher ISO setting is one. There is a trade off with that, most noticeable is an increase in noise. Depending on your camera, this may not be an issue. Another choice is moving the flash closer to the subject. If you’re bouncing the flash off the ceiling, try moving the flash closer to the ceiling. Or try moving the “ceiling” closer to the flash by using a piece of white foam core as a reflector above the mushrooms. The point is, there are lots of options.

For the most part I found that having the flash mounted on the camera and simply bouncing it off the ceiling worked just fine. I also tried placing a piece of white foam-core below the mushroom to reflect some light back up under the cap.

Be sure to photograph the mushrooms from different angles by simply turning the container. And try different backgrounds as well.

This technique will work for all sorts of subjects and I’m looking forward to the spring and summer flowers to try even more.