A warm spell in mid-June saw me toddle off to the woods again, this time armed with a new - well "vintage" - 35-105mm Canon FD macro lens I'd snagged on Ebay. Shooting in the woods, even in bright mid-morning summer sunlight, is still a game of shadows and dappled light. Even with the aperture wide open and shutter speed dropped down to 60 the long dark tube of the macro lens absorbs a surprising amount of light. The result however, were these contrast(y) images of bracket fungus. I took a workshop with the noted landscape photographer John Blakemore, during which he pushed us to look beyond powerful gradients of contrast to a wider spectum of tones and semi-tones. That said, dusky woodland groves seem to me an appropriate setting for these bolder image. As I wandered around, brambles snatching at my clothes, I met a father and son team out hunting for wild muchrooms. I learned that this particular species of bracket fungus like beech trees and that June/July is Chicken of the Wood season, when I should look upwards when encountering an oak, since COTW like the nestle in the crotch of oak trees, usually some height from the ground. They also steered me towards some Stink Horn mushrooms, which truly are an alien looking protrusion worthy of a classic X-Files episode. They do smell, but of the first puff of stale ozone that follows the opening of a plastic sandwich triangle containing beef and mustard sandwiches. Encountering that odor deep in the woods is surprising and incongruent, which is perhaps why the brain reels. One book describes the stink horn stench as the smell of rotting meat. Apparently, they are also edible, but god forgive the poor soul whose aching stomach led him to this unholy shroom.
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