Peter Baumgarten, an OM SYSTEM ambassador, photographs centimeter-tall mushrooms and slugs in McLean's Park on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, Canada. He visits the forest several times a week, a 15-minute drive from his home, to walk his dog and search for macro subjects on rotting logs.
Baumgarten shoots mushrooms from below eye level to capture their gill structure and keep the forest greenery as a soft background. For slugs, he shoots handheld at around 1/100 second shutter speed to avoid blur from their movement. He raises ISO when light is dim on the forest floor and uses in-camera focus stacking on his OM SYSTEM OM-3 to keep more of the subject sharp.
He recommends exploring one or two days after rain, when mushrooms emerge in warm, moist conditions. He avoids bright sunny days, as dappled sunlight on the forest floor often hinders rather than helps. "Photographing mushrooms is a great way to get into macro shooting," he says, noting that mushrooms offer "infinite patience" and won't run away.
Lisa and Tom Cuchara, also OM SYSTEM ambassadors, search for macro subjects in meadows and woodland around Little River in southern Maine, often after dark. Lisa discovered a hornworm covered in silken cocoons of parasitoid wasps in a garden at night. She used in-camera focus stacking with an OM-1 Mark II and M.Zuiko Digital ED 90mm F3.5 Macro IS PRO lens to capture both the caterpillar and cocoons in sharp detail while shooting handheld.
The Cucharas use a small flash with a diffuser for insects to avoid harsh highlights and deep shadows on shiny exoskeletons. Chris McGinnis searches rainforests in Costa Rica and Panama, as well as locations in Maine and his own backyard.