Jon,
Pretty nice. Don't give up on fungi. They are one of my fave subjects. C&C:
Nice job on this. Fungi are more difficult to photograph well than most people realize. I like the black and white version a lot; great texture, tone...and very good subject/bg separation (IMO a key problem area with many b&w photos)
Color version has a WB / color balance "blue cast" due to the shady lighting. Sometimes your subject and the bg will have different WB requirements due to different lighting, and in that case, Steve S knows how to best correct for that issue. I'm no expert in PP.
Personally I'd like to see a bit more space on the bottom of the photo. It feels unbalanced / cramped at the bottom.
I find the grass blades in the foreground distracting. Also there are a few lighter colored things in the bg that are distracting. Typically I weed distractions like that out, using DOF preview to spot offending items before exposure, and using tweezers and mini scissors for the dirty work.
Matt, thanks for your helpful comments. I am no expert in PP either (what PP I do is very minimal). If I added more space at the bottom then there would be more distracting blades of grass in view so I chose the lesser of the two evils
I won't give up on fungus, it just seems as there are only a few people that are interested in them
Jon, no problem, glad I could help. I know what you mean, that few people are interested in fungi. I posted a thread on this forum months ago with some pics, and the response was minimal. Well, we can both post our mushroom pics and enjoy and talk about them together, and if anyone else wants to join in, so be it
I also think you should continue photographing fungi, as these two photos and your others are quite nice. I agree with everything Matt said and would like to see the color version of the second one.
Yep! Keep at the fungi Jon. Both are great, really like the B&W one though
fungi is a fascinating photographic subject and you are good to it Jon
I prefer the color version and I think that with a touch of PP you can make it lot better. My suggestion would be to desaturate the greens on the right a bit and selectively sharpen the "hats" of the fungi.
Due to the tiger striping on the caps and the background, the black and white version works better.
Interesting little guys. Just curiouss if they develop umbrella like caps or if this is it?
Fascinating gill structure