Lichen Photography

Lichen photography, April Windle

There are a number of reasons you might wish to photograph lichens, and the approaches, level of skill and equipment required can vary with your reason (or reasons). Lets consider a few possibilities:

as an aide-memoire, to remind yourself of what a particular lichen looks like in the field, as opposed to your herbarium;
for artistic reasons. Many lichens can be aesthetically appealing and you might want to capture some of that appeal in a photograph. Or you might wish to use the photo as a basis for a painting, for example;
for publication in a scientific journal or a magazine such as British Wildlife as part of a paper or an article.

Another consideration is whether you only wish to capture a general view of a lichen or whether you want to capture close-up (macro-photography) or even microscopic (photo-micrography) details.

Let's look at each of these scenarios in terms of what equipment and skills you might need, and what approaches you might adopt. {NB - the following notes assume you will be working with a DIGITAL camera. Much of what is said will apply to film, but equally much of it will not}

For general photos of lichens as an aide-memoire almost any modern compact camera (or even phone camera) will do, although some are more suitable than others. Factors to consider include:

minimum focusing distance, which will govern what level of close-up shot you can achieve; many cameras will allow you to shoot very close indeed - 1cm or less. However, the closer you get, the more limited is the depth-of-field (DoF) going to be.
how well the camera copes in low-light conditions. Remember most basic cameras will automatically compensate for low light levels by increasing the ISO setting - which means you will probably get a useable image - but at the cost of image quality. How serious this is will depend on how much light there is and the quality of the camera). Using flash and/or a tripod can help - (see later). But carrying a tripod around rather counteracts one of the advantages (greater portability) of a compact camera.

More on identifying lichens from photographs here.

General advice (January 2021)

Many lichenologists use compact digital Olympus TG-4, TG-5 or TG-6 cameras which do good close-ups and "stacking" to get in-focus macros shots. Larger Digital SLRs with a suitable lens and bridge cameras may also do good macro close-ups.

There are also magnibands and clip-on attachments for mobile phones which are pretty good for photos in the field.

Phone cameras can also be used to take photos looking down through a microscope; various attachments are available to clamp a phone in place. Alternatively there are special cameras which replace the eye piece.

Various Facebook groups for lichens etc exist and people occasionally discuss photography.