On a recent night walk with my friend, talented macrophotographer Bryce Macquillan, we encountered an incredible flush of fungi in the forest. One bank revealed more blue Entoloma hochstetteri than I have previously seen in my entire life so photography opportunities abounded. I was carrying my normal night macro gear comprising a Nikon Z7 with Nikkor Z MC 105mm f2.8 VR S and a Godox V1 with home made diffuser which works well for invertebrates. I spent some time trying to line up compositions and shoot focus stacks but nothing that I saw on my LCD recreated the excitement of what I was seeing with my eyes. Bryce was doing some work with a 35mm macro and seeing his images was more interesting. The disappointing image at the head of this post is representative of what I got with the only thing of interest being the lovely blue colour.
It was such a stunning spectacle that I returned early the next morning with my wife to share the wonder. On this trip all I took as a camera was my iPhone 14 Pro which recorded this next image as the early morning sun shone into the forest.
Out cycling that afternoon another friend mentioned having been out photographing mushrooms so I offered to show him the blue ones the next morning. As usual the night was disturbed with my head spinning to try and plan to achieve what I was hoping for. What I was most impressed by was the bright delicate fungi erupting through the leaf litter in the dark forest. I wanted their colour and delicacy as the major feature of the image with just a hint of the environment. This needed a low wide angle view point so I followed Bryce’s lead with a 35mm lens. Mine is not a macro lens but still has a near enough close focus for a subject of this size without needing an extension tube or add-on diopter. The other big issue was lighting as the flat diffused light was not what I wanted. I went with a twin flash arrangement using small Godox MF-12 on arms to get light under and glancing across the mushrooms with little spill onto the surrounds.
I began with the 2 fungi from the iPhone photo which sadly had drooped in the intervening day. They still provided a nice subject in context with a hint of the surrounding forest, almost as if picked out by a ray of sun.
Moving to other subjects I aimed to achieve something more along the lines I was working for. This single specimen really captured the colour and delicacy with the light showing the gills.
Among the blue mushrooms were even more numerous grey variants and an entwined pair on a slope made a nice subject.
My favourite was a group of 4, one larger with 3 smaller, suggestive of a mother with her 3 daughters (things so delicate and beautiful can only be female!)
Reviewing these images on my camera, I felt I was finally getting somewhere and after processing felt satisfied that I had achieved something to record what I had felt when witnessing the spectacle.
As an aside, the Māori name for the blue mushroom is werewere-kōkako. The blue colour matching the blue of the kōkako wattle. Appreciating details like this really adds to my enjoyment of these ephemeral encounters. In modern New Zealand the blue mushroom, along with the kōkako, features on our $50 note making it the only banknote in the world celebrating a fungus. In this day of electronic payments $50 notes are almost as rare as the mushroom itself.
Photos apart from iPhone 14Pro image with Nikon Z7 and Nikkor Z MC 105mm f2.8 VR S or Nikkor Z 35mm f1.8 S. Focus stacks assembled with Helicon focus.
