I always knew that frogs were a environmental indicator, however I have been educated in the fact that fungi and also a key environmental indicator, specifically relating to air quality. Whilst this little specimen is healthy and happy growing on the side of a bit of bark in the damp, dark undergrowth, there are are some fungi which when exposured to pollutants grow and age in a different way, one of which causes the fungi gills to grow/form on the top creating a rose shaped fungi, which is called Rosecomb… apparently this is bad 🙁

Focus stacking, on the other hand is good for fungi 🙂 it allows a much greater depth of field in a macro image, particularly where the subject is super small 🙂 did you like that segway ?

This image is a stack of about nine shots, basically all it is taking a slice from extra picture which is in focus and blending them together to create a nice sharp image with the whole subject, in this case the fungi and a bit of the bark. I find that +Adobe Photoshop does a good job, however often there needs to be a bit of the manual alignment to get things to look decent.

The process goes alittle like this…

> find cracking little fungi -> position camera, tripod and body as close as possible, the challenge here is to do it without getting dirty and without moving fungi 😉
> take several shots with the focus changed a bit…you know.. start with the stalk in focus then work forward and aft of that.

Load into stack -> autoalign – > select layers -> auto blend (with stack) -> manually brush in bits where photoshop lacks awesomeness… 🙂 -> edit per normal process.

Exif love:
D750 coupled with Nikkor 55mm f2.8 @ 55mm Aperture: f/29 and Shutter Speed: 1/60s
ISO 400
Lightning goodness : SB600 off to the left triggered thru onboard flash with gerry holding a diffuser in one hand, kneeling on the ground and pressing the shutter with the other 😉

https://blog.avernus.com.au/the-indicator/