alaskan

If you like mushrooms you might be also interested in my old topic Alaska: extreme mushroom photography.
The first three were taken with a pocket p&s Panasonic Zs7,handheld.The last one taken with Canon T3i.All on location inside our rainforest, no PC trickery.#3 may look like I did major PP to it or applied some effect but it is not so,that is how the camera saw it.

fdeak Loc: Saint Michaels Maryland

Wow wow! Really nice :thumbup: :thumbup:

John Lawrence

Amazing photographs. They look like fine art. :thumbup:

Bmac Loc: Long Island, NY

These are some of the best mushroom images I have ever seen. Outstanding. :thumbup:

luvmypets Loc: Born & raised Texan living in Fayetteville NC

Wow!! Great pictures!!

tainkc Loc: Kansas City

Absolutely Fantastic!

sailorsmom Loc: Souderton, PA

Wow! Ivan, I've never seen mushroom shots like yours! They are amazing..and fantastic shots!

laskalass Loc: Land of the Midnight Sun

beautiful did you have a light behind some of them?? Did you use a macro lens? Very nice!!

Gitzo Loc: Indiana

Hand held, with a P&S ? I'm IMPRESSED ! Very impressed indeed!

Now.....are they, A. really mushrooms B. toadstools or C. not sure, unidentified ?

Where I live in western Indiana, we have these mushrooms called "morels"; they actually get pretty big at times, but so far the biggest one I've found was about the size of a tennis ball; every spring, we have a two day "Mushroom Festival" and auction about 6 or 7 miles from where I live.

During the week to 10 days prior to the auction, a LOT of guys go out mushroom hunting, some because they love to eat the things, but mostly to take to the mushroom auction.

You won't believe me when I tell you what people will pay for these things; finding them is VERY "iffy", to say the least; )even though they do tend to "come up" every year in certain places. One "story" has it that they "come up" near dead elm trees; (and there are about 3 or 4 species of elm trees in my county), and so far, I have not been able to find if they "prefer" any particular kind of dead elm tree to "grow" near. Right now, I have exactly 1 big red elm in my front yard, which is about 6 feet from our gravel road; and we DO have morels that come up, mostly within fifty to a hundred feet of the dead, red elm;

After going to the mushroom auction a time or two and seeing the crazy prices people were paying for the things, three years back, I started finding real little morels in my front yard; most of them were only from 1 to 3 inches long; morels look quite different than most mushrooms; they do have a "stem" (or "stalk")which is VERY short, but the "head" is roughly "cone shaped", to "cylindrical", and is very "krinkly" looking; (very easy to properly identify, quite unlike many other mushrooms)

I put maybe 8 or 10 mushrooms in either 1qt or 2 qt zip-loc freezer bags, and I had about 6 or 7 bags. Selling these things is almost as "iffy" as trying to find them! I did really well, but it was just "blind luck"; you need to be at the auction BEFORE they open, (which is about 10 AM) the reason being.......the people bringing mushrooms "line up"; the first guy in line registers FIRST, and they mark "1" on ALL of his bags; when the auction starts, all bags marked "1" are auctioned first, and so on; it depends greatly who is in the crowd, when YOUR mushrooms are sold! I was very fortunate; I think my number was about 15 or 17, so my mushrooms sold about noon, (when the crowd was BIG) I had actually weighed all of my bags on a very accurate electronic postage scale, ( I'm sure I was the only person who had done this); I think I had like 6 oz in each bag, and there were either 6 of 7 bags; each auction they hold up maybe 2 or maybe 3 or 4 bags, all depending on how big the mushrooms are; I don't remember how many people bought my bags, but I do remember what they paid in total for them.....$117! A lot of people had 3, 4, even 5 big pic-nic coolers full of bagged up mushrooms! Because I had accurately weighed my bags, I knew the exact weight on all of them; I think they ended up fetching like $45 a pound.

I've been told that if you order these things in a fancy restaurant in Indianapolis, they cost about 3 or 4 times as much as sword fish or lobsters; (which doesn't bother me, because I don't like them!)

My BEST advice to anyone contemplating eating mushrooms;
be VERY certain that you properly identify the mushrooms you eat, (unless they have been raised commercially), then you don't have to worry; if you end up eating a toad stool, it's all over with! No amount of frying or baking has any affect on their toxicity, and they definitely will kill you.

alaskan

Thanks Fdeak.

alaskan

Thank you John for looking.

alaskan

Thanks Bmac,your comment is always appreciated.

alaskan

Thank you Luvmypets.

alaskan

Thanks Tainkc.

alaskan

Thanks Sailorsmom.If you want to see more elaborate ones please check my old topic Alaska: extreme mushroom photography.