How to Photograph & Edit Glowing Mushrooms

In this video I'm guiding you through the process of capturing and editing glowing mushrooms to create wonderful macro landscape photography.

Part one - Taking the pictures:

I was looking for something cool to shoot on a rainy, overcast day and came across a guide on how to create glowing mushrooms on 500px. And since its currently autumn I decided to give this a try and headed to the next forest.

To make the search easier I was looking for a conifer forest since I know mushrooms love those kinds of trees. According to the guide I searched mushrooms which were on a higher ground so I’m able to take pictures from beneath them, but most of the times I ended up with my DSLR on the forest floor with the mushroom on the same level.

Once I found the right object to shoot, I chose a wide-open aperture, in this case F/4 since I was shooting with the canon 24-105 L lens and adjusted the shutter speed. Generally, I was aiming for a darker image to make the glow effect more visible. To make the object appear bigger I chose of focal length of 55 mm.

Now that the settings are fixed, I activated the intervalometer of my DSLR, so that it takes a picture every 7 seconds and used the flashlight of my smartphone to do some light painting on the mushrooms. For cool results get as close as possible to the top of the mushroom so the light shines through it. Don’t worry if your hand is visible on the picture, as we’re going to mask them out later in Photoshop!

Part two - Image Post Processing:

My goal was to create a magical miniature landscape with the glowing mushrooms as the main focus point. I wanted to have nice contrasting colours, so I wanted a warm glow for the mushrooms while the rest of the picture is covered in a cold blue / green tone to also emphasize the forest mood. The #PostProcessing for this shot was done in Adobe #Lightroom and #Photoshop

First, I did all the basic raw adjustments for the images (base image + the light pictures) in Lightroom. Working on the base image first, I activated the lens corrections and switched the colour profile to Adobe Landscape to give the photo some more saturation. Next, since I wanted a cold colour style, I dropped the temperature of the white balance quite a bit which will apply a blue colour tone. Then, to get some brightness I increased the highlights and the whites and to further increase the saturation I added some vibrance.

I also applied some local adjustments to separate the mushroom from the background some more. With a radial filter I made the bokeh softer around the main subject by reducing the texture and the clarity. Then I used a radial filter to add structure by increasing texture and clarity on the mushrooms. Also, I added a graduated filter on the very near foreground, just to make it a bit darker by dropping the exposure.

For the colour grading I further worked on the green / blue tones by increasing the green / yellow saturation and carefully reducing the blue saturation. Since I wanted the shadows to have a subtle blue colour tone, I used split toning to add this tone to the darker areas.

The last thing I did in Lightroom was to add some vignetting and then synchronise the Light-Pictures with the setting of the base image I just edited. Since the highlights were a bit overexposed due to the flashlight I used for the lights, I dropped the highlights on those images to fix that.

[ThePhlogPhotography]

Hey, hope you could learn something new from this video!
If you want to support this channel, maybe you want to become a member? :-)
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[darren]

This has been my wallpaper for about a year now and I only just started wondering if it was somehow AI (sad world we now live in). I then had to reverse image search and found your amazing portfolio where you have video tutorials for most of your photographs! I couldn't believe you recorded yourself shooting the photo of one of my favorite wallpapers ever. I love your work, thank you so much!

[Canadiancurlies]

This is fantastic - thank you so much for taking the time to put this together and post! I have never done light painting but plan on giving it a go shortly. This is very helpful!

[luciegagnon]

Very good and interesting video. I will try this out soon, since it is mushroom season! Thank you!

[lizw]

Brilliant effect, and a very handy and easy-to-follow tutorial

[hkanderful]

Just what I have been looking for :D This is just a great tutorial.... I am heading for the woods tomorrow with my camera and torch

[hotme]

Wow, this is so awesome! tks for sharing!

[sander]

Great tutorial, will give it a go the coming weeks!!

[philduch]

That seems to be a great idea !!
Thank you very much for explainations i'll probably try it .

[terrytoms]

Fantastic tutorial. Thanks so much for sharing! Just got a macro lens and hope to try this.

[MikePageKaltenberg]

Looking forward to putting this into practice

[AndreasNapravnik]

Schön Deine Bearbeitung zu sehen, da werden Erinnerungen wach, denn ich habe vor drei Jahren einen Kalender für den Eigenbedarf mit Leuchtpilzen gestaltet

[stradbam]

HI Christian, thanks for the tutorial. I have this wallpaper on my PC at home and I was wondering if you can share it in 4K resolution? :)

[ferhat]

your contribution to society has been noticed :)

[bernadetteedwards]

Loved the video was very helpful, just wondering what editing tools did you use after creating the image into a smart object I don’t have them on my photoshop any chance you could share the link to download them. Cheers from Australia 🇦🇺

[Photographer]

Well done! I'm sure it's been addressed with both LR and PS (ACR). When the Black slider is moved to the right it shows '+' numbers but the amount of Black is decreasing?

[wowboss]

Hello! How is your flashlight phone yellow?

[ArnoReijnen]

What version of photoshop do you use? mine is so much different.

[pollygal]

Are you shooting in RAW format? Always?

[jupamoers]

Ich hätte ne andere Lampe genommen, aber sonst genau so gemacht^^