Toxic Trip
Fly Agaric.
Red is the (Chinese) colour of luck. As serendipitous happenstance would have it I was wandering in some Suffolk woods last Sunday and came across lots of these little bright things.
I'm rarely in pine woods (mainly Beech here) so it was a novel experience. And so was the challenge of photographing them - rarely done in my photographic journey. This was one of the better results.
Fly Agarics are very pretty, doll's cottage affairs. This one is about half mature - they start out as a ball pushing through the leafmould and then open out. Fully mature they looked like ballet dancers with their red arms gracefully held out...
They are poisonous but not as lethal as some. Indeed, some people groups have developed ways of cooking some types of them to extract the two hallucinogenic chemicals they contain for use in strange rituals.
Perhaps not something to try for Brownies' night, though :)
I've added the GPS co-ordinates to the pic so you can see where we were.
For the Looking Close... on Friday group theme Mushrooms today (that's the serendipity).
Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Looking Close... on Friday :)
[Handheld, well, ground propped in cloudy sunlight.
Developed in Capture One for colour. Reduced Clarity; increased Structure.
LAB curves to enhance colour in Affinity Photo.
Noise reduction.
Selective Colour to enhance greens.
Reduced Clarity to smooth background.
High Pass/Linear blend and USM sharpening with a bit of selective masking (it's not a very good focus depth really).
Cropped to 16:9 putting the mushrump off-centre.
Dark vignette and we are done. ]
Toxic Trip
Fly Agaric.
Red is the (Chinese) colour of luck. As serendipitous happenstance would have it I was wandering in some Suffolk woods last Sunday and came across lots of these little bright things.
I'm rarely in pine woods (mainly Beech here) so it was a novel experience. And so was the challenge of photographing them - rarely done in my photographic journey. This was one of the better results.
Fly Agarics are very pretty, doll's cottage affairs. This one is about half mature - they start out as a ball pushing through the leafmould and then open out. Fully mature they looked like ballet dancers with their red arms gracefully held out...
They are poisonous but not as lethal as some. Indeed, some people groups have developed ways of cooking some types of them to extract the two hallucinogenic chemicals they contain for use in strange rituals.
Perhaps not something to try for Brownies' night, though :)
I've added the GPS co-ordinates to the pic so you can see where we were.
For the Looking Close... on Friday group theme Mushrooms today (that's the serendipity).
Thank you for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Looking Close... on Friday :)
[Handheld, well, ground propped in cloudy sunlight.
Developed in Capture One for colour. Reduced Clarity; increased Structure.
LAB curves to enhance colour in Affinity Photo.
Noise reduction.
Selective Colour to enhance greens.
Reduced Clarity to smooth background.
High Pass/Linear blend and USM sharpening with a bit of selective masking (it's not a very good focus depth really).
Cropped to 16:9 putting the mushrump off-centre.
Dark vignette and we are done. ]