Fantastic Fungi: The Startling Visual Diversity of Mushrooms Photographed by Steve Axford

To think any one of these lifeforms exists in our galaxy, let alone on our planet, simply boggles the mind. Photographer Steve Axford lives and works in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales in Australia where he spends his time documenting the living world around him, often traveling to remote locations to seek out rare animals, plants, and even people. But it’s his work tracking down some of the world’s strangest and brilliantly diverse mushrooms and other fungi that has resulted in an audience of online followers who stalk his work on Flickr and SmugMug to see what he’s captured next.

Axford shares via email that most of the mushrooms seen here were photographed around his home and are sub-tropical fungi, but many were also taken in Victoria and Tasmania and are classified as temperate fungi. The temperate fungi are well-known and documented, but the tropical species are much less known and some may have never been photographed before. Mushrooms like the Hairy Mycena and the blue leratiomyces have most likely never been found on the Australian mainland before, and have certainly never been photographed in an artistic way as you’re seeing here.

more in link

Some very stunning images there indeed.

Axford sounds like a fun guy (gr) and lives not terribly far from me.

Also coincidentally I just wandered in carrying my camera and longest lens after stalking and shooting what I believe is an immature Pied Heron.

Mmm, mushrooms. Ta Arts there’s some lovely snaps there.

>Mmm, mushrooms. Ta Arts there’s some lovely snaps there.

Got me thinking of Lilliput :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilliput_and_Blefuscu

“Swift gives the location of Lilliput and Blefuscu as Latitude 30°2′S, to the northwest of Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania). Because this area is actually occupied by Australia, and on the basis of other textual evidence, some have concluded that Swift intended to place Lilliput in the Pacific Ocean, to the northeast, not northwest, of Van Diemen’s Land. However, the map (see illustration) clearly places Lilliput in the Indian Ocean, well to the west of Australia but still northwest of Tasmania.

Lilliput is said to extend 5,000 blustrugs, or twelve miles in circumference. Blefuscu is located northeast of Lilliput, across an 800-yard channel. The only cities mentioned by Swift are Mildendo, the capital of Lilliput, and Blefuscu, capital of Blefuscu.”

Stan Kelly the painter of eucalypt fame (see link below), also began painting fungi, but they were not acceptable botanically as the species could not be reliably identified from paintings. A shame because he was very good.

http://www.cv.vic.gov.au/stories/an-eye-for-eucalypts/12211/stan-kellys-eucalypts/

PermeateFree said:

Stan Kelly the painter of eucalypt fame (see link below), also began painting fungi, but they were not acceptable botanically as the species could not be reliably identified from paintings. A shame because he was very good.

http://www.cv.vic.gov.au/stories/an-eye-for-eucalypts/12211/stan-kellys-eucalypts/

He was very good at Eucalypts too. I have his books.