Mushrooms are the flowers of fall, and photographing them may look easy but it’s not. Here are a few helpful tips to use when photographing them. First, you’ll want to correctly identify the mushrooms you shoot, so pick up a good mushroom book to help with identification. My favorite book on fungi is Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora. I also recommend his mushroom field-pocket guide.

When I photograph mushrooms, I often begin with a document photograph. This helps me identify the mushroom later and creates a stock photography photo I can use. If you’re having trouble with identification, spore prints and other identification factors listed in the book can help.

Photographing Mushrooms

When photographing mushrooms, I often look for a good background first and then I look for an interesting mushroom. As with flora photography, I usually zoom into a small area of the mushroom that inspires me the most – such as the cap or the gills underneath. Photographing from above can capture some nice mushroom patterns.

When photographing mushrooms, changing your point of view can alter a subject drastically as well. Shooting from above is nice, but photographing a mushroom at ground level or even from below is much better, so lie on your belly and get down and dirty. Mushrooms photograph best on overcast days, but even then you may still notice the mushroom cap giving off some reflective glare so a polarizer will come in handy.

All images in this article © David M. Cobb Photography.

Editor's Note: This photo tip by contributor David Cobb originally appeared in Issue 18 of TrailGroove Magazine. You can read the original article here. See more of David’s photography at dmcobbphoto.com.