Tag Archives: lichen

Photographing lichen: using a hand-held reflector to get better lighting

Lichen are visually fascinating: their bodies have gorgeous textures, lines, and colors. But capturing all of that can be challenging. Take, for instance:

This is the exact same lichen as two other pitures featured elsewhere (http://bit.ly/p76e4K and http://bit.ly/o76PpT), but unlike those two this has diffuse, even lighting applied.  I like the other two better, and am posting this one primarily as a contrast.  A brown-fringed gray foliose lichen overgrowing at least three other morphologies of lichen on a rock.  I believe the primary lichen has numerous isidia (small finger-like structures protruding from the thallus).  My best guess is that this is in _Physcia_, but I'm not sure.  This lichen was found in Vasquez Rocks County Park in Los Angeles County. (Marc C. Perkins)
Even, diffuse lighting allows for the entire body to be viewed, but textures and height have been minimized. My best guess is that this is in _Physcia_, but I'm not sure. This lichen was found in Vasquez Rocks County Park in Los Angeles County.

That lichen has gazillions of lines and textures on its body, but the diffuse shade lighting isn’t helping show them 1.

I typically seek out lichen that are in the shade, but in an area that has full sun available only a few inches away.  This means I can hand-hold a small reflector 2 to bounce sunlight back onto the lichen, trying different angles as I work the camera.  Here’s the exact same lichen with reflected light added to the shot:

A brown-fringed gray foliose lichen overgrowing at least three other morphologies of lichen on a rock.   I believe the primary lichen has numerous isidia (small finger-like structures protruding from the thallus).  My best guess is that this is in _Physcia_, but I'm not sure.  This lichen was found in Vasquez Rocks County Park in Los Angeles County. The scale bar is 5mm (contact me if you want a version of the image without the scale bar). (Marc C. Perkins)
Reflected light added from the left of the image. The scale bar is 5mm.

In that image I’m reflecting light in from the left of the image, and holding the reflector a good distance away from the rock (nearer to the camera) to shorten and soften the shadows. The textures of the lichen are brought out beautifully.

If you want to add more lighting contrast, just hold the reflector closer to the rock so the light comes in at a shallow angle and the shadows get less fill:

A brown-fringed gray foliose lichen overgrowing at least three other morphologies of lichen on a rock.  I believe the primary lichen has numerous isidia (small finger-like structures protruding from the thallus).  My best guess is that this is in _Physcia_, but I'm not sure.  This lichen was found in Vasquez Rocks County Park in Los Angeles County. The scale bar is 5mm (contact me if you want a version of the image without the scale bar). (Marc C. Perkins)
Reflected light added from the right of the images. The scale bar is 5mm.

In that shot the reflector’s now to the right of the lichen, and lower to the rock. The lichen looks, on first glance, completely different. In fact, it looks so different that I included two pictures of the same lichen in my introduction to lichen post; did you notice they were the same?

And, for your comparative pleasure, here are all three images stacked up:

Continue reading Photographing lichen: using a hand-held reflector to get better lighting

An introduction to the beauty and diversity of lichen

Last week I visited Vasquez Rocks, and wrote about the trip in this post. While the geological features were neat, what really interested me were the critters growing on the rocks. After all, what organismal biologist can go to a park with the word “rocks” in the name and not look for lichen?

For those who don’t remember Bio 101, lichen are a symbiotic organism: they’re a fungus and either a green alga or cyanobacterium living as a single unit. Fungi are masters of living in dry, dessicated environments with low nutrients (many plants have fungal symbionts that help the plant’s roots get nutrients out of the soil). However, fungi can’t obtain energy from sunlight.  Luckily for lichen, algae and cyanobacteria are photosynthesis experts. Pair the two up and you’ve got an amazing organism: one that can survive in a desert, exposed to the full summer sun all day while living on nothing but bare rock. No soil to get nutrients out of. No possibility to send roots down to the water table. They’re awesome.

But from far away, lichen don’t look like much1 . After all, many species of lichen require years to grow a centimeter or two (growth rates of lichen are typically reported as mm/year). But look up close, and the beauty of these organisms reveals itself as a complexly structured body consisting of beautiful lines, textures, and colors.

A brown-fringed gray foliose lichen overgrowing at least three other morphologies of lichen on a rock.   I believe the primary lichen has numerous isidia (small finger-like structures protruding from the thallus).  My best guess is that this is in _Physcia_, but I'm not sure.  This lichen was found in Vasquez Rocks County Park in Los Angeles County. The scale bar is 5mm (contact me if you want a version of the image without the scale bar). (Marc C. Perkins)
A brown-fringed gray foliose lichen on a rock. My best guess is that this is in _Physcia_, but I'm not sure. The scale bar is 5mm (contact me if you want a version of the image without the scale bar).

Quick quiz: how many species of lichen are visible in that picture?

The gray one that fills the frame is the dominant individual, but there’s at least four species visible2. And the gray one is overgrowing all the other three.  This is competition, lichen style. Lichen have only a limited amount of area where they can grow (the surface of some substrate), and inevitably they start to run into each other. Since they get their energy from light, whoever can overgrow the other is likely to win. You’re witnessing a fight to the death.

The number of lichen visible in that picture also demonstrates another characteristic of lichen that I love: they’re diverse. Walk into any given habitat that’s amenable to lichen, and within a few feet you’ll likely find a dozen or more different species. They’ll be different colors, textures, shapes, and sizes. See, for instance:

A crustose yellow ascomycete lichen growing on a rock.  Multiple apothecia are visible.  I believe this may be _Acarospora socialis_, but I'm not sure.  This lichen was found in Vasquez Rocks County Park in Los Angeles County. The scale bar is 5mm (contact me if you want a version of the image without the scale bar). (Marc C. Perkins)
A crustose yellow ascomycete lichen growing on a rock. Multiple apothecia are visible. I believe this may be _Acarospora_ (_Acarospora socialis_?) or _Pleopsidium_, but I'm not sure. The scale bar is 5mm (contact me if you want a version of the image without the scale bar).

Most lichen are ascomycetes, meaning that their fruiting bodies are based around asci, which are often found in cup-shaped structures. Take a look at the picture above, and you’ll see a couple of little cups; these are their apothecia, and they’re filled with spores that will be released into the air to grow into new lichen.

Adding to the diversity of lichen is the range of sizes they come in. Compared to the two above, the ones below are growing as tiny individual units:

Continue reading An introduction to the beauty and diversity of lichen