Photo Stories - The Mushroom Trip

Greetings! It’s been a busy time getting this website finished and optimized for search engines etc. That’s all pretty much wrapped up now, so I have some time to sit and write something and I thought it would be fun to share a photo story about how the website cover image “The Mushroom Trip” was made. I chose that photo to start this little photo stories series off because it represents a significant milestone in my evolution both as an artist and as a technician. Like Ansel Adams in 1927 when he made “Monolith The Face of Half Dome”, my piece “The Mushroom Trip” is the single image I can point to as the moment that I had arrived into my technique. It was the first time I had been able to crack so many of the mysteries that had been holding my work back. These photo stories will probably be the only place you’ll ever hear me talk about the equipment and gear I used for each shot. It’s not that I don’t enjoy talking about gear, it’s just that it’s always the first thing people want to talk about and it all gets so tribal and dumb “You use that camera? It sucks, you should use this one!” and everyone has their brands that they love and blah, blah, blah. So if you’re into the gear aspect, I’ll divulge what I can but mostly I love talking about craft and technique and the impetus behind making the images, and that’s what I’d like to focus on most.

I made the image on October 25th, 2021. Before that, I had tried to work with mushrooms many times, using a macro lens handheld, just kind of pointing the camera towards them and hoping something cool would be captured, and once in a while I’d get lucky. Mostly I just ended up with a few neat close-up pictures of mushrooms. There was no story, no feeling. It didn’t help that I hadn’t quite developed my macro photography technique enough to have any confidence in it. Anyway a month or so before this, I had just finished my “Punkins and Squarsh” piece, and for some reason that one felt like the culmination of something. I wasn’t sure what was next, but I knew I needed a change. I remember one morning, in that first “golden moment”, the one where you’re kind of half awake but half asleep, the idea came to me that I should study the history of photography. I thought maybe somehow if I went backward in time in my learning, I could maybe move forward somehow in my work. So I started watching documentaries about the old masters of photography and I fell down the rabbit hole, as one does. I came away with a new sense of where my work would go. I would move to eliminate color from most of my work. By working in the greyscale I felt I could better communicate what I was trying to say.

On the day I made “The Mushroom Trip” I remember having that feeling come over me, where I kind of sense that there’s a work to be made, and I need to make myself available to the possibilities. After getting the kids to school, I went home and got my gear out and charged and started to think about what I could do. By chance, I was looking at Instagram stories and saw one of my friends hiking somewhere locally and he was showing all of these crazy mushrooms he found along his hike. I knew right away that this was what I was waiting for so I asked him where they were and headed out. I got to the spot and packed my travel bag with the gear I would be using. I brought my main camera body, a Canon EOS R5 which I had just gotten a couple of months prior (it’s still my main camera, favorite one I’ve ever owned) and with it I brought the Canon RF L 100ml f/2.8 Macro Lens and a BR-E1 Remote Trigger, so I wouldn’t have to touch the camera and risk blurry images. I knew that macro work would bring it’s own challenges with lighting and depth of field but I figured I would solve that by using a tripod to keep the camera steady, and some off camera flash to ensure I wouldn’t lack for light. I had any number of strobes to choose from but to keep things light I packed my Westcott FJ80 speed light and the accompanying Wireless Flash Trigger, and then to diffuse the light I had this little F-stoppers flash disc that gave me the perfect amount of control. They don’t make the flash disc anymore from what I can tell, but there is this Westcott Pocket Box which I use for this kind of work now, and I love it.

In my mind I knew I wanted to make a triptych. My goal was to find three separate mushroom scenes and weave them together into one larger compoisiton. So with all of my gear in the backpack, and a bottle of water in hand I set off down the path. My friend hadn’t really said where he found the mushrooms, but I assumed they’d be everywhere. And sure enough, not fifteen feet from the car I came upon the first one, which is actually the center photo of the three I used in the final image. I got excited. The shape was so distinct with the way it curved and revealed so many details. I threw my bag down, got down on my knees and started to think about composing the image. Being so close to the ground, the tripod was basically useless, but I was able to just set the camera directly on the ground to keep it stable. I got the flash out and on and started photographing. One of the things that makes macro photography so difficult is that when you’re up close to a subject and it becomes magnified through the lens you run into depth of field issues. At macro distances, especially with the Canon RF macro, which magnifies the subject 1.4 times the normal size, sometimes even f/11 isn’t enough to get all what you want in focus. In the case, f/11 gave me what I was looking for. It then became a matter of the light, trying to find just the right angle to reveal the details of the mushroom without casting too many dark shadows on the rest. In the end, I made a composite of two separate images, one lit from above and one from below, but both from the same side. This allowed me to keep detail in the shadows where I wanted it and get a nice even light across most of the image. Sitting there on the wet ground, contemplating that first photo I got so stoked, I could see the finished image in my mind. I should probably have been paying better attention to where I was because I decided to lay down on the ground, so I could see through the viewfinder and try a few more angles, and as I did my left hand went full palm into a massive pile of dog poo. I’m talking full weight down, all the fingers, none spared. Thank goodness I’d brought the bottle of water. I put my gear back in the bag and used about half of the bottle rinsing my hand off, endured the walk of disgust back to the car to get some napkins, wiped my hands dry and went back to work.

For the next two hours I wandered all over the area and while I found many different scenes of mushroomery, none quite had the impact or fit the mood I was after. My water long since drained, I figured I’d head back to the car. At the very least, I had that first image and while I didn’t have two others to marry it with, I figured I’d at least have the one, and maybe I could come back another day, or find some elsewhere. On the way back to the car I kind of got lost, took a wrong turn and ended up on a strange trail that led down a hill, rather than up to where I was parked. I decided I would hike down the way a bit and just see what I could find. It wasn’t long until I came down a muddy hillside and found a gigantic tree that had fallen, lying on its side. It turned out that the strange trail was just a detour, a short cut, because the log was covered all over with mushrooms, some growing out of the moss, some out of the ground around it, they were everywhere! I spent another hour just in that one spot, and made probably a dozen photographs, two of which became the bookends of the triptych. My process was the same for every image. Because they were all macro images, I kept my aperture at f/11, which at those scales would still give me shallow depth of field, but would keep enough of what I wanted in focus. Then it became a matter of composition, getting the right angle, the perfect viewpoint. It wasn’t always easy to get the camera and tripod where I wanted it, I didn’t want to destroy the place so I had to get creative with where I put everything and in the process I got quite muddy and wet. After each composition was achieved, I would adjust my shutter speed to allow in just the right amount of ambient light for the desired mood, and then lastly I would introduce the flash to light the scene in just the way I wanted it. I’m a huge fan of Rembrandt Lighting, which is wonderful for creating depth and highlighting detail. It also produces a rich, timeless look whether you’re photographing people or, in this case mushrooms. Once I had what I was looking for, I packed up and headed out. This time I found my way back to the car. Cold and tired and soaking wet from laying in the dirt and wet, I was still super stoked about the possibilities of the photographs I’d made. I knew which ones I would use, how I would retouch them and how the final composition would look.

After I got home, and transferred the files, the editing process went quickly. Getting what you’re after is so much easier when you’ve known all along what you were trying for. Part of my return to the traditional techniques of old was that my main focus was on tonality, that is, having the full range of tones from black to white each represented in the image, much like Ansel Adams talked about his Zone System, only now I was doing it digitally. One of the problems I see most with digital photographers who use black and white is the images seem to be mute, full of grey tones but rarely capturing deep blacks and bright whites. It became a matter of prodigious dodging and burning, I knew which areas of the photos I wanted the view to focus on, and so I worked the images until they became what I had already seen in my mind. From there I used photoshop to combine the three into a triptych, and it was done.

Technically, it’s an achievement that still blows me away, something I can look at and say “wow, I actually made that.” When I view the image, even now I think I managed to elevate the humble mushroom into something more than itself. I don’t like to talk about the actual meaning behind most of my images. I would much rather have the viewer form their own based on how the image makes them feel, and if I say what I think it means, it’s like spoiling a big part of the enjoyment.

So for months I kept the image to myself, as has been my custom for most of my life as an artist. I knew how much I loved it, and I didn’t want the magic to go away by just posting it on socials for a few hearts and thumbs. I knew that this work needed to be seen in print, as large as possible so the following summer, in the process of looking for a thank you gift for one of my dear friends, I thought what if I gave her a version of this image. I had already grown tired of metal prints by this time, even though I would use that medium a few more times, and I wanted something that would really pop. Looking into acrylic prints, I could see that they were a step far above metal and that the wow factor was exactly right for the image. The first acrylic print of “The Mushroom Trip” was made as a 30x10” and it was done in summer of 2022 and it far exceeded my expectations. It was gifted to my friend, who continues to find peace and inspiration in it, and is currently the only printed version of the photo to exist, until now. I’m excited to be able to finally offer a limited edition larger sized acrylic print at 60x20”.

I have returned to that same place many times since then, and that log is still there, and if the conditions are right the mushrooms are there as well. It’s a special place in my world, a place I can go for quiet contemplation and creation. I feel thankful that life brought me there at that time, to make that first image. Places like that are getting more rare and harder to find in this increasingly connected world. It was good to find one that still exists, for however long it lasts.

Well, that’s about all I have for today, thanks for coming by and I hope you come back around again soon.

-Cory