Details of the Appalachian Trail – Mushrooms in fallen tree.

In a previous post I mentioned shooting with a fellow LF’er at the Byron Reese trail on the AT. This was also my first outing with the Chamonix 4×5 04N2 camera. We had barely begun to walk the trail from the parking lot when I noticed this mushroom growing in a fallen tree. Bryan went to photograph a tiny stream and I walked back to try to capture this log and mushroom. I moved a piece of the broken tree that was blockng the left mushrooms but left it in the image.

It took me a few minutes to setup the camera and compose the image, as I was not used to a fresnel ground glass. I was only a couple of feet away from the tree and very low to the ground. I knew I wanted to to blur the background a bit so I only stopped down to f8 hoping I had enough depth of field in the foreground as the texture in the shadows and log was as important as the mushrooms. The area around the mushroom metered 3.7EV to 6.7EV so I placed an area that metered EV 5 on zone 5 and let the rest of the tones fall naturally. The meter called for 2 seconds at f8 so I had to add 1 second for reciprocity.  I also chose to expand the contrast a bit in development. This is a contact print at grade 2 with no dodging or burning or computer manipulation. The scan is a bit darker than the actual image in the shadows. I am pleased with the results except that I may crop it square to reduce the upper area.

Update: I revisited this site a few weeks later. The left mushrooms had fallen off and the mushroom on the right had grown so large it no longer created a good composition.

Technical: Chamonix 04N2, 135mm Schneider lens, Ilford FP4 4×5, f8 @ 3 seconds. Developed in Pyrocat HD 3:2:500 for 32.5 minutes using minimal agitation. Contact print on Ilford MGFB classic using grade 2 filter.