Harder than it Looks

Aug 20, 2022 – We were camped in a damp forest and the trees were covered in lichen. It’s Usnea longissima actually. It’s very beautiful.  Only more so when you realize, that this lichen is sensitive to air pollution.  It has no roots, so all its nutrients have to come from the air. I wanted a photo that captured the lichen but also made the viewer think of forest smells, dappled light, and damp leaves. It’s harder than it looks to take a photo of lichen.

I started looking for a thick patch of lichen with a view straight into the tree. I found a spot and took my shot.

It was messy. The lichen was ok, but I thought the trunk of the tree distracted too much from the lichen. I liked that the tree’s new grown was clearly more sage-green than the needles. But I wasn’t happy with the shot generally.

I looked for another location where the tree trunk would be more obscured by the branches and lichen.

Nope, more is just MORE, but not good.  So, I tried less.

I was back to tree trunks that distract from what I was trying to highlight.

I needed a different approach. Maybe from the side. What first attracted my attention was the texture of the lichen. I liked that it swayed in the breeze. I tried again, but this looked more like I accidentally hit the shutter release while just walking around. It had no obvious subject.

Some photographers use a card that looks a lot like a slide without the photo in it. It’s called a composition viewing frame. These help to take your composition out of context so you can see what the final photo will look like before actually taking the shot. I didn’t have one.

I kept looking.  Simplifying the photo was better than the “more” approach but what else could I try? I had tried more and less, front and side. What about from under the tree, out!

I wandered some more. I was looking for a branch that was high enough off the ground that the lichen had foliage for a background but not a tree trunk. It couldn’t be so high above me that I ended up with sky for a background. It needed enough lichen to be the obvious subject but not so much as to be messy. Too little and it would look like animal fur caught in a tree. This is what I found.

Not perfect. They rarely are, but much better. I had learned to look at the lichen from a different perspective, and spent a very nice afternoon in the woods. And of course I found some cool mushrooms as a bonus.

Western Giant Puffball (Calvatia booniana)

Fly agaric (Amanita muscaria)