When:
Monday October 21 7:00 PM
Denver Botanic Gardens, Sturm Auditorium

Speaker:
Rami Saikali

Title:
Fungal photography, macro photography, and high magnification photomacrography with microscope objectives!

Description:
Learn how a camera and lens (including your phone!) works to capture windows into the natural world at any scale, including of pretty fungi! We will discuss basic and technical considerations for taking photos of your subject of choice — including down to the microscopic scale — with a camera and various lenses. We will cover fundamentals and equipment selection that inform you of what techniques may be available for you to express your vision in differing conditions and tell the story you want to tell, with cute and curious fungi peppered in. Learn about: depth of field, aperture, illumination, diffusion, exposure, iso, chromatic aberration, equipment, photo stacking with a live demonstration, how to work with microscope objectives, and how to improve the fungi photos you take with your phone.

Bio:
Rami is interested in fungi of all kinds and sizes. They became interested in mushrooms primarily from a foraging perspective in Minnesota around 2015 and upon moving to Colorado they promptly discovered the mushrooms were for some reason the same yet also a little different. That sparked learning about what a genus was, which led to finding out about cryptic species complexes, and it’s all been downhill since then. Rami is keenly curious about fungi as exploring the field frequently challenges our ability to remember language and categorization as human communicative endeavors rather than “real” descriptions of the natural world as it “truly” exists. This large knowledge gap between an underexplored field and our senses and intuition is exciting as it allows for creative speculation and experimentation similar to when other scientific endeavors were nascent, revealing shimmering opportunities for observation, imagination, and experimentation. Rami is interested in taxonomy, art, identification, microscopy, toxicity & edibility, photography & photomacrography, and probably more things we’re forgetting to list.