Photographing shrooms is possibly one of my favourite of all subjects. These, sometimes colourful, items deliver two counts on the excitement scale...first finding them. Often elusive, rarely in top shape and regulary in difficult to compose positions they set challenges of agility and super sleuth probing. And secondly, the rewarding prospect of managing to choose the right aperture, focal length and subject to camera distance to ensure the cap is razor sharp and the background soft and unobtrusive.

To help on the agility department I always take a ground sheet to lay on and a right angle finder so the camera can be at ground level. I use a 100mm macro,(equivalent to a 150mm with the 1.5x crop of the Pentax K10D sensor) and shoot at wide aperture so the background is out of focus.

I remove stray leaves and grass from the shot to clean it up before pressing the shutter.