Magic Mushrooms

Field Notes II.XXXIV: Combining images in Photoshop to make creative lighting effects

Welcome to Field Notes!

Ok, different kinds of mushrooms than you may be thinking of, but magical none the less. A couple of years ago I was on social media (Instagram!!!) much more than I am now. I left it for several reasons, but I will say that it did have the benefit of showing some really cool works of other photographers and artists that gave me some creative inspiration.

One of these inspirations was a photographer who was taking pictures of mushrooms and creating very interesting light effects in post processing. It gave them a captivating fairy tale world look. The idea stuck with me, and I decided to try it myself.

A big obstacle I quickly discovered is a lack of mushrooms growing in my corner of the world. They are here, for sure, but we have long dry periods when there are none to be found. Also, I seem to run across the interesting ones when I am not looking for them and am not able to photograph them.

Back in February of 2023 I was on a focused hunt, and I was able to find the two mushrooms below.

In these images I was only able to create a mild effect of the fairy tale lighting. I continued looking for more mushrooms in the days and weeks after finding these, but found none. Maybe the temperatures of early spring were too cool. The lack of success pushed this idea into limbo. As I became focused on other pursuits, it was essentially forgotten.

I returned from Honduras in late July of 2024 to a period of heavy rain in the Southeast US. Strong thunderstorms hammered the region almost daily for two weeks or more. The combination of wet and hot summer temperatures created ideal conditions for mushrooms.

One morning I was out for a long training ruck at the State Botanical Gardens of Georgia. There, along the long loop trail through the hills and forests, I saw enormous mushrooms! They seemed to be everywhere, and of all shapes and colors. I particularly remember a bright red one that must have been 6 to 8 inches tall.

Seeing these mushrooms immediately reminded me of the magical mushroom effect I had been interested in long ago. But, as you have probably guessed, I didn’t have my camera with me and did not have time to go get it. In fact, the thought of mushrooms stuck with me, but it was a week and a half before I was able to come back with my camera to try to photograph them.

It was a dry and hot week and a half. Some mushrooms were still around, but many from the previous visit had simply vanished. Still, I hiked the trails and found a few worth photographing. This time I was able to make the lighting effect in post processing much stronger. I still have progress to make with these, and have to work around the limitation of not having a macro lens to use. However, its a very fun project to play around with!

I’m not providing a tutorial, but let me give you some insight into how I made these images. These were taken mid-morning on a sunny day. I chose a very wide aperture with a long focal length to achieve the bokeh (blurred background) effect.

I took numerous shots of the exact same composition and focus. Some were pretty close to a normal exposure, but most were very under exposed. In the under exposed shots I used my cell phone flashlight to light the ground and the under side of the mushroom cap from different directions.

I really do not enjoy Photoshop, and avoid it when I can. However, there are things it can do that my preferred editing program Lightroom just cannot do. The biggest of these in photo stacking. Photoshop lets me take all of these images of the same mushroom with different exposures and lighting and virtually place them all one on top of the other. I place masks over each image but the bottom one. This effectively hides the photo with the mask, so only the bottom one is visible. Then, I use a brush tool to only allow specific parts of the hidden photos to become visible through the mask. In this way, I take the base image and, in a way, paint in the light from the other images.

Finally, going back into Lightroom, I use adjustments to make the light from the mushrooms warmer and the surrounding areas of the photo cooler.

I had fun with this technique and it lets me have some creative liberty with photography. I never did find the big red mushroom again, but maybe that’s just motivation to keep on the lookout for more so that I can try this out again!

Hey, guys! This week’s issue was a bit shorter and next week very likely will be, too. I’m working on a lot of updates and exploring new directions behind the scenes that I am very hopeful will work out well for my photography and for Field Notes. You may already see some small changes in the Field Notes home page (except I believed there’s a bug in the Substack system right not that is not letting it display correctly) and I have updated my photo galleries page below. Don’t worry, I’ll explain more when the time is right. For now, its taking a lot of my time and energy, so bear with me!

How did you like my magic mushrooms? Want more detail about how I made them? Have tips for how I can make them better? Let’s hear it-

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