Photography can be a funny thing. The other night I was invited to a secret spot to see a reportedly impressive colony of bioluminescent Ghost Mushrooms.
I followed the directions I’d been given, expecting to find myself at a remote and private spot deep amongst the trees. Instead, I found myself kerbside in a suburban cul-de-sac, looking at a makeshift hide of blankets and towels, hastily erected amongst the lowest branches of some trees to block out the surrounding street and house lights. Inside, behind the blankets, like a pale sage shaman in a tepee, were the mushrooms, ceremoniously adorned around the stump of a single tree.
I spent the next hour, on and off in that rudimentary teepee, sitting in the dirt, fighting what felt like a losing battle against the challenges I experience shooting in the dark: trying to accurately focus on a subject I can barely see, and calculating the optimum camera settings to best capture the subject without too much grain, overexposure, colour-shift, or movement. The ghostly glow of the mushrooms was so pale it offered no help in focusing, which made calculating the settings an even more tedious matter of trial and error. Meanwhile, my troublesome tripod mount had decided to let my camera slowly and repeatedly slide, no matter how many times I unscrewed it and retightened it, turning a dozen photo attempts into blurry smears.
Imagine all of this amongst the sand, leaves, twigs, and no doubt mushroom spores, while trying to avoid the small clutch of other photographers, mushroom aficionados, and ambient light. It’s at times like this, feeling supremely frustrated, that I catch myself wondering why I bother.
At one point during the shoot, I realised, that amongst all the palaver I was not actually enjoying the experience of simply sitting with the magic of nature. So, I stopped, and sat, and soaked in the almost supernatural beauty of that pale glowing fungi. Its presence was palpable and calming. It was simply being, and seemed to suggest that I should to. I relaxed into the moment and felt better for it.
With the cycle of frustration broken, I regrouped, and fired off a last handful of attempts with the camera before crawling out, brushing myself down, and packing away my gear.
The image below is the last of 37 shots I took overall. It was the only one in which I managed to get most things right. Yes, photography can often be a numbers game. It was taken at a focal length of 35mm, at f8, with a lengthy 2-minute exposure at 400 ISO. I am happy enough with it; it helps answer my self-questioning “why do I bother?”
But the sobering thing is, the photo looks nothing like what I witnessed. The camera "saw" the magical bioluminescence that my eyes couldn’t, but it didn’t “sense” the presence of the mushrooms that I felt, or the moment. What I saw was a very pale glow, not the vivid green. Yet, what I sensed was mysterious and magical, and it made me ponder just how much of our surroundings we truly see, hear, and feel amongst all the busy-ness of our lives. And just how much of the universe is unseen and unheard to us…in the vast spectrum of light and sound waves that exist, we are physically equipped to experience only a minute sliver of it all. The rest remains shrouded.
Sometimes we need technology to help draw back that veil to reveal what lies beyond. And other times we just have to be open to feeling it for ourselves.

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