MUSHROOMS

We have had a ton of rain during the second half of August, and it appears that that has inspired a new crop of mushrooms.  Today as I started on my morning walk I noticed a couple of mushrooms growing in a mulched area in our subdivision.  Mushrooms are ephemeral organisms and I decided I had better get a few photos before things changed over the course of the morning.

I took all of the shots with my Tamron 90 mm macro lens, and even though it was sunny and quite bright, I was using my tripod on nearly all of the shots.

There were actually two primary mushrooms.  The first was 4-5 inches across and was accompanied by a "juvenile" companion.

Here is a closeup of just the larger mushroom.

This was at about 6:30 a.m., and the mushrooms must have emerged during the night.  The larger specimen was draped in some sort of orange liquid that I chose not to touch.  This was actually a pretty good shot technically, at an aperture of f/18 with an exposure of 1/25 second.

Then it was on to the larger specimen.  I think these were all the same species, but this one was quite large, at least 8 inches across.  Here, first, was a set shot of the whole mushroom.  Classic.

What caught my eye were the gills on the mushroom's underside, and I spent most of my "session" attempting to capture them.  This was not going to be easy, for a number of reasons.  First, the mushroom's underside was only 4-5 inches off the ground, and it was impossible to capture the gills in full without physically taking the mushroom apart, which I did not want to do.  What that meant was that I basically had to lie on my stomach and in a public place . . . in my own subdivision.  Second, if I wanted to get a closeup, depth of field was going to be an issue.  Optically, the closer my lens was to the object, the shallower the depth of field.  I didn't mind that part of the image would be out of focus, but I would need to play around with apertures and focal points to see if I could get a shot that I liked.

Here was an early effort that I shot at a wide-open aperture of f/4.5.  For this shot the front of my lens was probably only about 3 inches from the leading edge of the mushroom.

This shot did not work.  The gills were in good focus, as was a portion of the top of the mushroom that happened to be at the same distance from the lens as the gills.  I was OK with the fact that the bulk of the top of the mushroom was badly out of focus, but what I did not like was the fact that the very perimeter was out of focus.  I am much more comfortable when a background is out of focus than when the foreground is.

The following shot was much better, with a super-narrow aperture of f/51.  Everything except the mushroom's"peak" and stem are in good focus.  However, the background, though not in good focus, is quite distracting.  Not really what I wanted.

So for the rest of the shots I got close enough with my macro lens to largely eliminate any background.  All of these were shot at a very narrow f/51.  The first was OK, but it didn't tell much of a story.

I thought perhaps the best shots were the following, which gave a hint, at least, of the curvature of the mushroom's underside.

John

MILWAUKEE HARBOR CRUISE

A couple of local rivers empty into Lake Michigan to form Milwaukee's harbor and a couple of companies offer harbor sightseeing cruises.  When my son and his family were here earlier this month we took one of the cruises.  Here are some of the photos that I got during our 1-1/2 hour voyage.  The cruise began on the Milwaukee River in downtown Milwaukee, passed out into the lake past the breakwater, moved north a couple of miles, and then returned inside the breakwater and back up the the river to the downtown area.

Here first is a photo of our cruise ship, the Vista King.

And, by the way, here is a photo of what turns out to be a "houseboat," a decrepit boat that has been an individual's residence for many years, the Solomon Juneau.  At least one could say it has "character."

The cruise passes a number of buildings in Milwaukee's industrial area.  I like older architecture and enjoyed photographing some of the buildings, but others might find the buildings to be forgettable.

The cruise also passes a number of bridges, including the following, known as a bascule design.

The largest bridge we passed is the Hoan Bridge, which spans the river as it empties into the lake.

Here is a shot of a portion of the downtown that includes the northern approach to the bridge.

At the southern end of the breakwater is a U.S. Coast Guard lighthouse that sits out about 3/4 mile east of the shore.

On the portion of the cruise heading north, I was able to get a shot of Milwaukee's skyline that I thought worked best as a black and white.

At the north end of the harbor is a spit of land extending out into the lake that includes a line of trees that I thought also worked well as a black and white.

On our return inside the breakwater, a thunderstorm was approaching, and I took a few shots of the Milwaukee Art Museum and Discovery World museum with the storm clouds as a backdrop.

Finally, for what it is worth, I also took a couple of photos of a tableau of rope on our cruise ship.

John

MILWAUKEE COUNTY ZOO

Milwaukee has a highly regarded zoo, and when my son and his family came for a visit earlier this month, we made the zoo one of our stops.

One of the first areas we visited was the primate house.  In the past I have had good luck photographing the mandrills.  This time I caught a few shots of the gorillas and orangutans.

This gorilla shot was not good, but they seemed uninterested in us humans, generally turning their backs.

I had better luck with the orangutans.  First was a juvenile hiding behind the crotch of a tree.

The best shot, though, was of an adult orangutan.  Really quite a nice shot.

I got a number of decent shots of large mammals, including a camel, a giraffe, an African elephant, and something called a red river hog.

My favorite of these was the  elephant leg, but the red river hog was pretty weird.

We also visited the reptile house.  The iguana would have made a nice shot except for the fact that the animal was in the process of molting.

I had better luck with the following green lizard.

Reptiles generally make good photo subjects because they tend to be motionless much of the time.

The Milwaukee zoo really is a fine facility.  It seems pricey, but if you have young children and live in the area, the annual memberships are a fairly good value.

John

SANDHILL CRANES

Our subdivision includes both woods and ponds.  As a result, we are blessed with a variety of birds.  Of course, the geese are not welcome, and we have found ways to discourage them.  But we also have our share of other birds, including wild turkeys and cranes.  This morning as I was coming home from my daily walk I almost ran into a couple of sandhill cranes that were loitering in the doorway of an office building a couple of blocks from our house.  The cranes didn't seem wary of my presence, which seemed unusual to me.  In any event, as soon as I got home I grabbed my camera and returned to catch some shots of the cranes.

The cranes were still there and seemed to be in no hurry to leave.  I began taking pictures from about 30 feet away and worked my way closer, ending within 8-10 feet of the birds.  I would up taking perhaps 50 shots and kept 5 of them.

The first is of one of the cranes that standing one one leg.

One of the drawbacks to this set of shots is that the background was an office building.  I was using my 70-300 mm lens to get as much reach as possible.  I opened up the aperture as far as I could to isolate the birds from the background.  That works better the closer the camera is to the subjects.  In this first shot the background remains something of a distraction.  As I moved closer, I was able to reduce that problem.

This second shot is not great, as the bird was looking away, but I did like how I caught the curve of the crane's neck.

The next is a classic profile shot from the neck up.

I was pleased with the overall resolution of this shot, which I shot at an ISO of 400 and an aperture of f/5.6.  The shutter speed was a quick 1/1000 second. The lens was all the way to a 300 mm focal length.

As I said, there were actually two cranes, which are sort of included in the following two shots.  I was focused on the nearer crane, so that the other bird was blurred out.  I thought that approach was better than trying to boost the depth of field at the cost of greater background clutter.

The composition in the latter shot is the better of the two.  I was happy to get shots with the birds in the same posture, though contrasting postures would have been nice also.

John

WISCONSIN STATE FAIR

It had been literally decades since my wife and I had been to Wisconsin's State Fair, held in one of Milwaukee's suburbs.  But when the visit by my son and family earlier this month coincided with the annual run of the fair, we decided to go.  I brought my camera and got the following:

Our first stop was to get the fair's iconic creampuffs.  Here is a shot of my son, Jeff, and grandson, Max, enjoying one.  For some reason Max was only interested in the powdered sugar atop the confection.

We also visited the giant ferris wheel, touted as the world's largest traveling ferris wheel.   The signs said the wheel stood 150 high.  I'm not sure either of those claims was true, but here are the shots I took.

Along the way we took in a couple of pig races.  Contrary to my assumption, the races were free, which was about what they were worth.

The best part of the races, as one might suspect was the talent of the announcer, whose narrative and jokes were polished and occasionally funny.

The next venue was the giant slide.  Jeff and I took the boys down the first time, and later Jeff and Bei took them down a second time.

I made a technical error in taking the above shot.  I used a narrow lens aperture, which necessitated a slower shutter speed, resulting in a blurring of Jeff, Bei, Stanley, and Max.

Every fair has vendors selling whatever the patrons will buy.  The following wares caught my eye.

Every fair has animals.  Here are a few.

"Ugh.  You're choking me."

Here are Jeff, Max, and Stanley in the scoop of one of the farm tractors on display.

Finally, I enjoyed the following trash receptacle.

John