Rodney Campbell's Blog

Searching for Ghosts

NIKON Z 7 + 90.0 mm f/2.8 @ 90 mm, 466 sec at f/8, ISO 1000

Gerry has been chatting with me about photographing the bioluminescent Omphalotus nidiformis (aka Ghost Mushroom) for a couple months now. And showing me some cool images from the Bioluminescence Australia facebook group. So we’ve been looking for places where we might find these fungi ghosts. You basically have to find them during the day, then go back at night

I’d mentioned that during the covid lockdowns we’d rediscovered all the many bushwalks around our home. And looking at some of the daytime shots of what they look like, I was sure I’d seen them on some of those trails. So I’ve recently been on the lookout during said walks. Yesterday when walking the dog near our home I found this one (extremely large) fungi that looked quite promising

Now normally most of the shots I’d seen of these there would be a cluster of small thimble to perhaps shot glass size shroomy ghosts. The one I’d found was next to the path in full sun, and was dinner plate size! It was right on the ground so didn’t have the longer horn funnel stem. But it did have the cream coloured caps with the yellowy/orangy top turning to almost black centre. I pinged Gerry about my potential find with a few phone pics

Last night I went back with camera in tow to check my luck. As you can see we have some success

I couldn’t actually see the glow with the naked eye. There was however an almost full moon out so there was way too much ambient light. I had to jury rig my camera bag and jacket to “shade” the subject so the moon wasn’t lighting it up. Even still I think there was probably too much ambient. I also don’t know if or  how the strength of the bioluminescence might change over time – e.g. do the tiny baby ones glow or do they need to get to a certain size/age before they do; as they age (to be really old like this one) does it fade, etc

As for the shot – I used the 90mm macro lens (tho I didn’t need macro in this case given the size). I also had to shoot from quite some distance away to fit the whole fungi in. I’m basically near ground level so I can see some of the gills underneath. Even at f/8 I’m getting very little DoF (I tried wide open and f/4 but the DoF is way too shallow). At ISO 1000 I needed an almost 8 minute shot to get a good exposure. In this case a wider lens from closer with a wider aperture might be a better option

Now to find some of the more traditional cluster of smaller ghosts…

Note: These photographs (especially the wider shots) look much better when larger. To see larger versions in an inline overlay slideshow gallery viewer click any of the images.

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