A personal PhotoChallenge matching a story to a photo every day for 30 days with short tales of travel, mountaineering, Nepal, art, and a few personal ones too!

15 Down and dirty with David Bellamy!

About 30 years ago my young daughter and I became “fungus hunters”! It was great fun trundling through forests and smaller woods like a couple of explorers in South America or Africa, inspired by the tv series with David Bellamy. Dressed in environment neutral colours and wearing our green wellies we had a large Canon SLR Camera and a set of macro rings which moved the standard lens away from the main camera body. This enabled you to get really close to small subjects and still focus. We carried a couple of books to try and identify the names of what we found too, but rarely did, as we visited places like Macaroni Woods in the Cotswolds, Delamere Forest in Cheshire for example. One of our most amazing discoveries was that occasionally patches of orange, yellow or red on dead wood were actually fungus, and when viewed under a microscope were mushroom structures too ….. whole miniature “forests” of mushrooms!

Sharon and I still go fungus hunting at this time of the year, but it’s amazing how technology has enabled digital cameras and iPhones to get up close with the fungus as we get down and dirty on the forest floor. This picture is from a few days back as Sharon and her husband explored The New Forest, not so colourful as many, but a worms eye view giving the best effect. Thank you David Bellamy, an inspiration.

Categories: Photography

Tags: 30 day blogging, 30 day challenge, David Bellamy, forests, fungus, Macro photography, memories, mushrooms, mycology, personal challenge, personal life, photochallenge, Photography, photostories, themindfulcamera, travel tales