((PKG)) FUNGI PHOTOGRAPHER
((TRT: 07:40))
((Topic Banner: Fungi Photographer))
((Reporter/Camera: Aaron Fedor))
((Producer: Kathleen McLaughlin))
((Editor: Kyle Dubiel))
((Map: Manchester by the Sea, Massachusetts))
((Main characters: 0 female; 1 male))
((Sub characters: 2 female; 3 male))
((Blurb: Mycologist and photographer Alan Rockefeller teaches a class in how to photograph mushrooms.))
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((Courtesy: Alan Rockefeller))
((NATS))
((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
Here's how I took this picture. You can see I took one of these Ulanzi lights and put it right next to the lens.
((NATS))
((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
It's not super fluorescent, but if it was pitch dark, we could make it good fluorescent.
((Speaker 1))
Should we save it for tonight then?
((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
Yeah.
((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
So, I got into mushrooms first, and then I got into photography later, so I could document my mushrooms. And I really did learn photography the wrong way, and that's just by taking bad photos for years and years.
((Courtesy: Alan Rockefeller))
So anything before 2010 is completely unusable. You know, what I really should have done is just ask like my dad or someone like, “Hey, how do I take a really good picture of a mushroom?” But instead, I just got a camera and started just using it and it was so bad. So now, I can teach someone how to take really good mushroom pictures in,
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you know, a pretty short amount of time. Just like in a day, I can, you know, teach everybody the things that it took me probably
20 years to learn to teach myself because I’m stubborn.
((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
Oh, and the other way to get a good picture of this would just be to close the aperture down. So, that way I'm not stacking. I'm just taking a picture. There's a lot of reasons that it's important to photograph nature. One of them is
((Courtesy: Alan Rockefeller))
scientific documentation, so you can record all of the features that you see.
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((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
The other is just to get people excited about nature. So, if you can take a really good picture of something out in nature, you can share it on social media, and thousands of people will see this picture and they'll be like, “Wow, that thing is really cool.
((Courtesy: Alan Rockefeller))
I want to see something like that. I want to be able to take pictures like that.” So, you can really spark people's enthusiasm and excitement about nature with a good photograph.
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((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
The light was just coming from behind the mushroom, so the light was like, the sunbeam was kind of coming at me, and I'm just kind of on the shadow side. That's the only picture I've ever taken like that. I love how it turned out.
((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
Mushrooms are just really interesting. One reason is that, you know, I've always liked to be out in nature, but I would kind of feel like I wasn't really making good use of my time when I was out in nature. Because sure I get a little bit of exercise, and sure it's pretty out there, but, you know, am I really furthering any of my goals when I'm out in nature? So, I almost felt guilty, just like spending all my weekends wandering around trails. But then when I got into mushrooms, I have an actual objective
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and I tell myself, “No, I'm not wasting my time.” You know, I'm out there getting the best picture I possibly can of all these mushrooms. You know, I got an actual goal out there. And so, it's definitely makes me feel like I have more of a sense of purpose. But also, mushrooms are just really mysterious, so they never get old. The more you look, the closer you look at them, the more interesting they become. You start to learn all the mushrooms, and then you see a mushroom that you've learned. It's like seeing an old friend and you're like, “Oh, cool. It's this one again.” You know, maybe, I haven't seen this one in five or 10 years.
I’m always looking for the nicest example of something. So, I can take a really good picture of a mushroom, but somewhere out there, there's always going to be a better example of it. You know, better shape, bigger, more of them and more stages of development. There’s always, you know, you’re always going to be able to get different, better pictures of mushrooms.
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((NATS))
((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
Yeah, so this is Penicillium Vulpinum. And so, I just focus this all the way close, and I'm going to tell it to take 100 photos because 78 was not enough. I take all of my mushroom photographs and put them all on iNaturalist and Mushroom Observer. So, these are these citizen science websites where I upload my photos there
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and they get saved forever, sort of like a digital online herbarium. So, I can just go on iNaturalist, and it'll tell me exactly how many mushrooms I've photographed. And last I checked, it was around 2,200 different species of mushrooms, and I think I got about 2,500 different species of plants, and then I got, you know, a few hundred species of insects.
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((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
So, it's a really good way to keep track of everything that I've been finding out in nature. When I was in high school, I got really into computer hacking. So, I was doing a lot of illegal breaking into computers, because when you're 14 years old, like breaking in an army base is like super cool. But when I graduated from high school, then I started working in industry doing computer hacking for companies and governments.
((NATS/MUSIC))
((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
So, this is a Crust Fungus, and it is a strongly fluorescent one.
I like doing nighttime photography. It's kind of cool because you're adding your own light for the most part. So, you can add ultraviolet light. You can have light of any color. You can put the light from any direction. So, you can get some really unique shots. And then some mushrooms glow in the dark, so they make their own light. So, I can do a long exposure and pick up the light that the mushrooms make themselves.
((Courtesy: Alan Rockefeller))
But usually at night, I'm doing ultraviolet photography, so I'm just shining ultraviolet light. In that way, I'm showing the fluorescence of the mushrooms and I get all sorts of really cool, you know, vivid colors that you can't get during the day.
((NATS))
((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
You hit the menu button
((Gary Gilbert
Executive Committee Boston Mycological Club))
Yeah.
((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
And it's under the photo shooting menu. So, you hit left to get back out of here.
((Gary Gilbert
Executive Committee Boston Mycological Club))
He's really even keeled, very affable, shares his knowledge without holding back at all. I said, “Hey, you want to come up to New England and give a photography workshop?” Because I couldn't make it to the workshop he's holding in Wisconsin because it's an isolated island. And he said, “Sure.” And then I said, “Hey, why don't you stay a few extra days, and we can take you up into the woods of New England.”
((NATS))
((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
Shooting start. And put some light.
((Gary Gilbert
Executive Committee Boston Mycological Club))
You're adding light just for the sake of it.
((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
Just a little bit of extra light because there was kind of a shadow on that side.
((Ruthie Ristich
Member, Boston Mycology Club, Maine Mycological Association))
I've been following him on Instagram probably for the last year and a half. And when I saw the announcement that he was coming to town, I just instantly emailed Gary. I've been shooting myself for a number of years, but I'm really interested in what he talked a lot about today, which is focus stacking.
((Alan Rockefeller
Mycologist and Photographer))
This one, like most of my images, like most of my photos are image stacked, and so I combine a whole lot of pictures into one picture. I can tell it's image stacked because you can see that this is really sharp, but the background is really blurry. And that's because I had the aperture all the way open. So, the aperture is what controls your depth of field, so that controls how blurry your background is. So, this is probably like 60 photos combined into one. It's true that computer hacking and nature photography and the study of mushrooms are complete opposites, and that's why I like them so much. Because, you know, its…you can do a lot of powerful things on the computer, but then you're sitting indoors at a desk all the time, and it's really cool to be out in nature, but you kind of need the computers to record
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and share what you're finding in nature. And, you know, if I spend half my time indoors on the computer and the computer or in the laboratory, and half my time outdoors in nature,
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it adds really good balance to my life, so I don't get tired of either one.
((Courtesy: Alan Rockefeller))
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