Photographic Identification of Fungi

Please photograph fresh specimens in good condition and if necessary move them to show immature, mature and old specimens in the same shot.

Please arrange the fungi to show both the cap and gills of toadstools (or the pores of brackets, tubes of boletes).

The photos must be of reasonable quality and in focus.

They should be taken outdoors under natural lighting wherever possible. If taken indoors, please use a white background (kitchen towel or printer paper) and with natural lighting.

Please use a camera rather than a mobile phone, to avoid shaky or out of focus images.

Please compress your digital images to around 0.5Mb memory size and no more than 1Megabyte memory size.

Please do not exceed 4Mb total file size of attachments to an email. Multiple images can be compressed into a zip-file, or sent by post on a CD.

We cannot guarantee to be able to identify everything, but will do our best. Alternatively there are a number of amateur photographer forums on the internet where digital images can be uploaded for identification.

One of the better sites that attracts expert fungus identifiers (and on insects / amphibians / reptiles / invertebrates / fish / plant / lichen / birds / mammals and much more) is the OPAL Biodiversity site www.opalexplorenature.org/ispot

or go straight to the I-Spot site at: www.ispot.org.uk