Passion for fungi grew from a life crisis
In this double episode you listen to my interview with Stephen Axford and Catherine Marciniak who are absolutely passionate about fungi, photography and film-making. Stephen and Catherine have been travelling their home country Australia and the world in the past 10 years to document mushrooms in pictures and their growth in time-lapse movies. In the first part of the interview you will learn
🍄 How they fell in love with fungi
🍄 How they developed their documentation of fungi in photographs and in motion
🍄 What led them to collaborate with researchers
🍄 Why fungal documentation can be an important resource to people
🍄 How it is as a non-scientist to contribute to science
Travelling around the world in the search of fungi
In the second part of the interview, Stephen and Catherine share stories from their travels to Asia and other places in the world. We talk about
🍄 whom they have met there
🍄 how they contribute to fungal awareness internationally
🍄 what their recent productions are and where you can find them
🍄 which books about mushrooms they recommend
🍄 what their favourite mushrooms are
Do you think they have a favourite one after documenting all that fungal beauty and diversity?
Brew yourself a cup of tea and enjoy listening to the interview with Stephen Axford and Catherine Marciniak here below or on our Youtube, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast or Deezer channels.
A decade of fungal passion
Stephen and Catherine met about 10 years ago and started a common journey into the woods. They documented fungi they found in close-up photographs. Especially fluorescent fungi then caught Stephen’s eye. These are not uncommon in Australia, where he and Catherine live. The next step was bringing into their “fungarium” photo studio pieces of dead wood with fungal mycelium on. Stephen and Catherine set up a process to document fruiting body (mushroom) formation from these materials in time-lapse imaging. After a while, people got fascinated by the pictures and videos that Stephen shared on the internet. One of Stephen’s videos was even shown in BBC’s Planet Earth 2.
Watch mushroom timelapse videos and interview with Stephen on the Planet Fungi youtube channel.
Find Planet fungi on Instagram.
Watch Stephen’s and Catherine’s movie Planet Fungi. Sneak peek here below.
Movie making about fungi
In the second part of the interview with Stephen and Catherine (releases Nov 24th), we will talk more about their travels to Asia and the planet fungi movie, their encounters with the locals their favourite fungal resources. In the meantime I invite you to listen to Stephen’s video below where he explains how fungi changed his view of the world.
