A first!

This is the first Amanita muscaria (fly agaric) I have ever seen. When I spotted it growing between a large parking lot and a city street, just blocks from my apartment, I gasped with delight. I have been wanting to see one of these for years! They are mildly poisonous, though sometimes ingested for hallucinogenic thrills. Wikipedia has an interesting article about them, and there's a fascinating blog devoted to these mushrooms, full of lore and photography as well as book illustrations here.

I had set out for a nice long walk in the rain today, looking for some street shots, as I am all about street photography these days. On a tip from Fotodiario, I've been reading Eric Kim's blog on street photography and was especially inspired by the work of Krishnendu Sata in Kolkata. I did find a beautifully colored sidewalk, gleaming wetly with reflected yellow from light through the last leaves and red from streetlights; and I found a good citizen in wellies with a rake, trying to clear the drain on an intersection where people in wheelchairs would have been blocked from crossing. I put these two in a Blipfolio. But it's the red and white mushroom that won the day. There's just no point in deciding for myself what I'm going to shoot. I give up and will just take what the universe offers.