THE HEART OF THE WOODS
EXPLORING MY OWN STYLE
The final task in this portfolio was to explore our own style. I looked back on some of my previous work to examine what made my images so unique, before attempting to apply the relevant techniques to a new piece of work. Once I'd decided on a suitable subject, fungi, I spent a lot of time wandering through woods across the country to find the perfect specimen.
So What is My Style?
For a long time I was certain that I didn't have a particular style. I honestly thought that my pictures looked the same as everybody else's and that they would blend into the background noise of people's Instagram feeds without a second glance. But as I began to take a closer look at my past work, particularly my favourite images, I saw a couple of elements stand out - bright colours and a shallow depth of field.
Colour has always been one of the main focuses of my work - so much so that I often joke that it's my only focus. When I'm out on shoots, colour is usually what draws me to a scene, and in post-production it's the one thing I spend the most time on. My aim as a photographer is to share the beauty of the natural world through the work I produce and I believe that colour forms a large part of that. Using a shallow depth of field allows me to draw the viewer's attention to particular details, patterns and shapes, often showing off simple things that have a humble beauty.
Creating The Heart of the Woods
As I already had a subject in mind, all that was left for me to do was to find it! Mycology is a relatively new interest of mine, but it's one I'm very passionate about - as I'm sure all my coursemates will tell you. I just think that fungi are really interesting little things and I love searching for their tiny fruiting bodies in the forest.
My first search for fungi took place at Wray Castle in the Lake District one rainy Saturday afternoon (check out my vlog - it was really wet!). After a disappointing start, and an encroaching fear that I'd completely missed mushrooming season, we came across a little treasure trove of beautiful fungi of all shapes and sizes. I was really happy with these results, and while I thought I might be able to submit one of them as a final piece I felt I ought to keep searching.
A morning trip to Coombe Abbey Country Park in the West Midlands also yielded some pleasing results. There was a much greater diversity of fungi here in comparison to Wray Castle, which was interesting note from a mycological point of view. The light was really nice for the duration of the shoot which really enhanced my pictures, but I still wasn't convinced that any of them were suitable for the final portfolio so I resolved to keep looking. My time wasn't wasted, however, as I got in some valuable practise!
The Final Shoot
In the end, as with many of my favourite fungi pictures, I stumbled across my subject by pure, dumb luck. I was visiting Packwood House, a National Trust property near where I live, for a shoot for one of the other images in this portfolio. Once I'd finished with the shoot I decided to take a stroll through the woods for a bit of relaxation - camera in hand should anything interesting turn up.
Almost immediately, something did.
As was the case at Coombe Abbey, the fungi were still going strong at Packwood. Foresight had smiled on me for once and I had my macro lens in my bag, so I grabbed the opportunity to get up close and very personal with some of the smaller specimens. I'd never used a macro lens for mycological photography before and the results just floored me, so I'll definitely be trying that again!
As I walked along the bright colours of a lone mushroom caught my attention amongst the leaf litter. I set to work straight away, trying to capture its best angles. As I had the macro lens, I asked my mum to hold the mushroom up so I could get a good angle on its gills. And that's when I saw its shape - a tiny heart, unseen and unappreciated from the forest floor.
It certainly stole my heart!
Project Mood Board
