Mario Brothers, a blast from the past in more ways than one! I’ve started going through some photos for my March gallery show and stumbled across this shot from 2014. I was in Auckland, NZ for a business trip and spent a Saturday on Devenport Island walking around playing tourist.
I took a bit of a walk up Mount Victoria to grab some photos of the amazing views at the summit. When I got up there, I nearly laughed my ass off when I saw the mushrooms! Imagine walking for a few hours and coming to the top of the trail and seeing pipes with mushroom tops dotting the landscape.
Once I regained my senses, I took a look at them and figured they were ventilation pipes for something, but what? (No Not Aliens!). I grabbed a few “just for fun” shots of the field of ‘shrooms while talking to a couple locals who explained they were vents for an underground water pumping station. I had forgotten about these images until digging for another shot from that New Zealand trip and decided to muck around with it and see what I could make.
Overall, I really didn’t do much to this photo in post. In On1 Photo I cleaned up the colors a bit, added a touch of dynamic contrast, and cropped a bit. The largest thing I did in post was adding a tilt-shift filter to create some depth in the image and add some bokeh to the grass. While the edits really weren’t jumping through many hoops – I think my photographic bouncing skills did Mario Brothers proud!
I’ve also made this image available on my online store. If you are interested in buying a print they are available in multiple sizes and formats through SmugMug.
Image EXIF data:
- Aperture: ƒ/8
- Camera: NIKON D610
- Copyright: ©2014-2020 John P. Hoke
- Focal length: 85mm
- ISO: 100
- Shutter speed: 1/250s
- Title: Mario Brothers on Devonport
