Member Presentation — Claude Bélanger
"The Nature of Fungi"
Monday, February 27, 2017
In recent years, Nature Co-Chair Claude Bélanger joined the Cercle des mycologues de Montréal and has been
taking courses about mushrooms. Mushrooms are classified as fungi, a kingdom (or taxonomic division) of living organisms. There are thousands and thousands of them in the world and they range from the microscopic to quite large in size. They grow in the most incredible places in a vast array of conditions. Fungi are vital in the dynamics of the world’s living ecosystem and are being discovered to be of increasing value to humans, especially as medicine.
There are many challenges to overcome in photographing mushrooms. They present difficulties of access, of lighting, of composition, etc. It is often necessary to use close-up and macrography techniques (in macro, it’s assumed that the ratio of the subject in a photograph to the subject in reality is a minimum of 1:1). The purpose of mushroom photography is often scientific or educational purposes, or for research. Fungi are also the subject of splendid art photography images.
My presentation will be on the nature of fungi and mainly on the organization, the material and the techniques required to successfully photograph mushrooms. I will illustrate my talk with master photographs of fungi and, more modestly, with some of my own work. Discovering their haunts and looking for examples of many different varieties of mushrooms can be a fun pursuit for Nature Photographers – rather like birders adding to their life-list of bird images!
taking courses about mushrooms. Mushrooms are classified as fungi, a kingdom (or taxonomic division) of living organisms. There are thousands and thousands of them in the world and they range from the microscopic to quite large in size. They grow in the most incredible places in a vast array of conditions. Fungi are vital in the dynamics of the world’s living ecosystem and are being discovered to be of increasing value to humans, especially as medicine.
There are many challenges to overcome in photographing mushrooms. They present difficulties of access, of lighting, of composition, etc. It is often necessary to use close-up and macrography techniques (in macro, it’s assumed that the ratio of the subject in a photograph to the subject in reality is a minimum of 1:1). The purpose of mushroom photography is often scientific or educational purposes, or for research. Fungi are also the subject of splendid art photography images.
My presentation will be on the nature of fungi and mainly on the organization, the material and the techniques required to successfully photograph mushrooms. I will illustrate my talk with master photographs of fungi and, more modestly, with some of my own work. Discovering their haunts and looking for examples of many different varieties of mushrooms can be a fun pursuit for Nature Photographers – rather like birders adding to their life-list of bird images!
