October etudes - 13 foto

This is a post to go with #WednesdayWalk challenge by @tattoodjay

From 2021, as proposed by UNESCO, the 40th week of the year is considered as the “World Novel Week”; its goal is to popularize reading:

The objective of this international week is to encourage appreciation of this literary genre as one of the expressions of human creativity, while raising awareness of the role of writers, as well as the different players involved in literary creation and the promotion of reading, for the flourishing of cultures and their free interaction and mutual enrichment.

(Is any AI capable of producing such texts yet?.. I guess no, but that is a question of time.) As I read thick novels on a regular basis, not only during this special week of the year, somehow I dont feel urge to celebrate it. Although I admit, that would be conceptual and cool to take a walk around the city on this occasion, capturing reading people at the streets.

Instead, I photographed the same things as always: autumn, leaves, mushrooms, birds, light...

Some trees still retain their green clothes, and some are already repainted yellow and red.

The thorn bushes cast luxurious reflections into the water - can you believe that no photoshop or AI was involved in the image below?

This hot melting gold is just the yellow foliage reflections on the water, no other magic than that!

I had a sweet not-so-usual crow encounter: the crow found a piece of ham, brought it to this mud spot source of fresh water, and arranged washing of said ham, followed by eating. All this happened at a hand's distance from me, and was successfully photographed. Crows are such a great object for observation!

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On this day I decided to equip my camera with my Sigma 150mm macro telephoto, and had aspirations for some picturesque fungi to shoot - and I did found them!

I found a rare type of champignon named "black truffle"! Just kidding.... - it's an ordinary champignon, it's just decomposed in such an interesting manner.

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Under one of the oak trees I was lucky enough to encounter a family of the scalycap mushrooms (Pholiota squarrosa) that just begun to grow. Over the years, I become accustomed to their unusual outlook... but the appearance is truly unusual, they look like small spiky alien hedgehogs, scaring away anyone who wants to encroach on them. As they develop, the hedgehog-shaped cap turns into a regular one, they lose their exclusive appearance.

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Looking at such beautiful ripe alluring acorns, it is impossible not to grunt with delight! especially if you are a pig. ))))

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At the other end of the park, there is an alley with chestnut trees - I never find any mushrooms at that location. It’s interesting, perhaps mushrooms don’t like to go into symbiosis with the chestnut trees? .. anyway, in October the ground there is dotted with chestnuts and their peels, this is a very pleasant sight!
Unfortunately, its only the inedible variety of chestnut occures in our north area ...

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Mushrooms do especially well under oak trees. Here I found a whole gold mine of scalycap, or the shaggy Pholiota. I remembered that last year I saw a large colony of these mushrooms exactly at this spot under the oaks in the park, and was passing by from time to time to check this place - and behold, a guaranteed predicted result! (It's nice that there are some things that you can rely on and predict... tho, usually, mushrooms is the stuff you cant rely on.)

These are edible mushrooms, and if they grew in the forest, I could forage 2 kilograms at once, without leaving this spot. But picking mushrooms in the city would be a bad idea.

And all I can do is take photographs. Look how cool, fleshy, invitingly alluring their caps are!...

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location:	St.Petersburg, Russia	October 2023	natural light
camera/lens:	Canon 5D	Sigma 150mm	raw-conv

All pictures taken by me. Thanks for walking with me, see you next time.

All images taken by me, copyright (c) @qwerrie

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