A Merry Christmas...

...And a happy New Year to you all.

A Fungi to be with...

(Sorry..)

I finished at a job in a church hall a couple of weeks ago and, with nothing else on the list, went looking for Pics of the Day.  I get a bit jaded by Pic of the Day, especially on the same patch year after year, but today inspiration was looking for an outlet and churchyards are a good place to start. Then I looked down in all the leaf litter and saw this...

In many ways this is a simple picture, but I deliberately went looking for a less conventional way to shoot it than I would normally (60mm macro etc etc).  Out came the 70-200, I opened it up to f2.8/f4/f5.6, crawled around in the leaf litter - fortunately it was still dry! - and did a little gardening of a few blades of grass between me and the subject.

I'm no wildlife photographer, unlike my local colleague Rob Canis, but I think this is a Shaggy Ink Cap, Coprinus Comatus.

Shaggy Ink Cap, Coprinus Comatus (I think!), peeking through the leaf litter in St Michael's churchyard,
Sittingbourne, on 24th September 2011. Autumn, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness?
Nikon D3, ISO 800, 70-200mm lens at 200mm, 1/800th at f2.8, raw image processed in Aperture.

The D3 was left on what is its near-default this time of year of ISO 800, but it could have been pulled down to base ISO of 200 if you're really worried by image "noise" (though ISO1600 doesn't make a D3 even sweat..). I handheld, flat on my stomach but a  bean bag would be the thing to rest the camera on with a reduced shutter speed. In Aperture I added 0.35EV exposure - on the JPEG the Ink Cap wanted to start "blowing out" at the metered exposure. There's a curve to add some "snap" to the contrast, then a little Highlight Recovery and Highlight Protection to make the Ink Cap look right. I could have gone with the meter reading and added more recovery to the raw, but decided to stop the "blinkies" flashing on the monitor on-site.