Welcome to my Glowing Shrooms Guide. Please study each section to learn how to produce stunning images of shrooms glowing in the forest yourself.

Deep in the forest there is a magical world hidden from prying eyes which comes alive at night. When all is quiet the Shrooms, dormant all year, start to glow.

Why they glow is a mystery; is this how they communicate with each other? Or perhaps it is an ancient skill they evolved from days long ago to help the other inhabitants of the forests at night, the fairies and the creatures of legend long since vanished. Or have they?

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Obviously none of the above is real, there are no faires and the forest fungi don’t glow at night. But one thing I have learned whilst shooting ‘Glowing Shrooms’ is you need to have an imagination. Although it is very technical, you’ll be crawling around on your knees and shooting multiple images to focus stack and blend whilst illuminating fungi, it is fun and very creative.

BE CREATIVE

How is it creative? Whilst combining the skills of macro photography you are also creating a mood and telling a story. You will be turning day into twilight, using the characteristics of your macro lens to create wonderful backgrounds and bokeh highlights, using light of course, using colour and white balance to create the mood you want, and creating a magical world to enchant your viewers. And most of this you’ll find very local to you. It just takes the time to get out there to your local woods and try.

Through this tutorial I will take you though step by step the gear you need, the technique of shooting Glowing Shrooms and illumination techniques, the processing steps of combining images into a finished shot, and some other examples of my own to help give you inspiration. Read on and I will you every success.

Although I shoot primarily with Olympus cameras (plus a Nikon Z7 and Sigma FP) this guide is suitable for all camera brands. For this reason I’ve made it very generic for a wider audience. Any camera that can focus bracket will be suitable, however if you do use Olympus you will find a dedicated section under ‘Olympus Settings’.

1-RECOMMENDED GEAR

All the gear you need, with tips on types of lighting and tripods, plus tips on other essential accessories you probably had not though about to make your shooting experience just a little easier such as brackets for holding torches and a floor mat for your knees, essential if your bones are starting to creak like mine.

2-ILLUMINATING SHROOMS

Tips and techniques for how to illuminate shrooms. This is one of the most important aspects of Glowing Shrooms, with different techniques.

3-SHOOTING TECHNIQUE

How to shoot the images, focus bracketing and settings, shooting additional sets illuminated, and being creative with backgrounds.

4-PROCESSING

Step by step processing your images, from stacking your focus bracketed images to blending them into a final images. Although this is using Lightroom and Photoshop any image processor can be used and other alternatives such as Affinity Photo can be used to blend the images together.

5-INSPIRATION

A selection of images with descriptions on how they were taken and illuminated to give you further ideas in your quest for ‘Glowing Shrooms’.

6-OLYMPUS SETTINGS

Although this guide is not specific to any brand, indeed any camera can be used which has the ability to focus bracket, this section includes tips and tricks for Olympus shooters, including which settings to use and buttons to set. Learn how to enable focus bracketing, which settings to use, how best to focus, plus a few other tricks and advice on how to save settings for your next session.