Large White Fungi - front 2, La Isla Escondida, Colombia

Here's another example of off-camera flash, also called creative lighting. Although the subject may be somewhat dull and the result not that shocking, this one is pretty tedious to pull off succesfully. It took 3 people and about 15 minutes of trial and error.

The setup is one photographer (me) and two people each holding a remote flash unit, which I trigger when taking the shot. In both shots, the cluster of fungi is both bottom and top lit, hence two units. Both units need a precise distance, to avoid overexposure or underexposure. Much more tedious though is the angle of each unit. Slightly off and the foreground would be overexposed, and the subject not well isolated, or it would cast ugly shadows on foreground subjects. You can see how the first shot, the frontal one, has some slight issues in that area. If desired, one could also control the flash strength of each unit, but I didn't in this case, I used distance instead.

I'm sharing two shots and for each shots 3 crops, to show that besides lighting, focus and depth of field were also precisely controlled down to the pixel level.

Here's a version where all I did is to cool the white balance, suggesting moon light:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/fledder/32746451368/in/datetaken/

You have to believe me that my intention in explaining this process is not to brag, instead to just share ideas. Creative lighting is a lot of fun. It's not a game of skill, rather a game of patience, trial and error, and ideas.