I Love Mushrooms — A Photo Essay

Come walk with me and look at mushrooms in the forest.

White mushroom with amber goo — Photo by author

I love taking walks along the wooded trails near my home in New York’s Mid-Hudson Valley. There’s something soul-nourishing about forest bathing, the practice of immersing yourself in the forest and slowing down. A 3 or 4 mile walk through the forest has become my favored (and only) form of exercise.

I always bring my camera on my walks. At first, it was because I’d hoped to capture photos of birds. But unless you’re at the forest’s edge or near a water source, it’s hard to capture pictures of birds when you’re in the woods (especially in spring, summer, and fall when the trees are full of leaves).

My camera isn’t really good at capturing birds even in the best of conditions. It’s an entry level DSLR camera with a 70–300 mm lens. What that means is that if the bird is more than about 15 feet away and it’s smaller than, say, your average North American Blue Jay, the shot tends to be fuzzy or grainy or both.

Don’t get me wrong. I love taking photos of birds. But this year I decided to try my hand at taking photos of stuff that doesn’t fly away when you point a camera at it — the way the light hits a fern on the forest floor, a stand of trees at the edge of a trail and, as you’ve probably guessed from the first image in this photo essay, mushrooms!