As I talked about in my previous post, Autumn is a time of transition and movement, and I was thinking of birds at the time of writing. However, the fall season is also a time when a new burst of life erupts from below, taking its turn for some limelight whilst the trees and plants shed their leaves from above. I am of course referring to fungi! Whilst fungi can be found throughout the year, it is during the cooler and often wetter months following summer that it is at its most abundant, and feeling a real urge to practice with the Z8 and its stacking capabilities, I've spent a good few hours exploring the local woodlands close to home in search of some autumnal blooms.

In short, I found a real range of incredible species, from typical mushrooms to alien-esque examples that viewed up close are really quite mind-blowing. I've spent a lot of time getting wet, dirty and contorting myself into uncomfortable positions in the hope of getting some low angle images. This increases the chances of an isolated subject against a (relatively) clean background and more often than not it worked very well indeed.

In terms of equipment, I went out with the bare minimum:

• Nikon Z8
• Sigma 105mm F2.8
• Bean bag

That's it. Really. No tripod, lighting or other gear. My reasoning being I'm just getting a feel for what works with natural light and the tripod wouldn't actually provide any more stability than the bean bag and wouldn't actually get me as low as I want to be. 

I chose to stack 60 - 70 images though in reality I didn't actually need that many and used Zerene to stack the images before editing in Lightroom. This may be a bit backwards as I'm aware that some people edit the raws before stacking the output JPEGs, and I will try that soon.

For now though, here are a selection of my favourite images from recent sessions.