Fungal Growth

So I bought the "instructional video" by Eric Bennett and got quite a couple of hints from watching it. Hence, I grabbed my camera this morning and made for a nearby forest, hoping to shoot something similar in golden hour. Alas, I only found some fungi to shoot, but hey, not going for a 5-star rated picture here, but checking the post processing workflow with a fresh image. Who fancies spending another couple of hours on a picture that's done already? Not me.

It still comes out slightly over saturated when I export it from Photoshop, can't make heads or tail of that. Anyway, considering that my composition is weak and the light decent at best, I'm quite pleased with the outcome.

16 Comments

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Nice balance colors Thorsten.

Thanks Loretta! Number one hint from Eric Bennett was to pull out 50% green saturation out right from the start, because green gets out of control very fast - think that is spot-on!

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Yes, I always play with the green slider, I like the darker, de sat, color of green, for some reason it makes for a more classical painting color, better on the eye. Too much bright green for me personally is uninteresting and flattens the image.

It's focus stacked from over 10 exposures, I blended every single leaf, mushroom and stem, took me like 4 hours of post processing in all.

Haha it's a ton of work! You only need it when there's no way of getting everything in focus, like with this wide-angle(!) picture, the lens was very close to the subject and at that distance, depth of field is crap.

still it makes for a beautiful result even if it is a patience tester

True, but in the above above picture 2 things come into play: Focus stacking and color/lighting and a lot of that depends on Bennett's workflow. I'm currently re-editing the image with the tree leaning over a path and look at it with different eyes - I fully expect that the end result will look nothing like version 1.

i like the shot your referring to...i think it will turn out well. i should look into editing techniques because I feel like I'm fumbling around just trying different things.

Turned out nicely, but shows blurry on this website - it's pin sharp actually.

the colours are on point mate! love the highlights

Thanks Danny! Have to agree, the colours are what keep me coming back again and have another look.

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