For the Love of Fungi: Foraging with @the_mushroom_ninja
To see more of Ryan’s photos, check out @the_mushroom_ninja on Instagram.
It’s hard to believe that Ryan Grastorf (@the_mushroom_ninja) started photographing fungi a mere year and a half ago. “As an effort to reduce stress in life, I just started hiking more,” the full-time student says. “I found a mushroom, a very cool looking mushroom, and the rest is kind of history.” Since then, Ryan has gone into the woods near his home in Baltimore every day in search of his subject matter. He estimates that he’s photographed about 150 different kinds of mushrooms, many of which he has identified with the help of the Instagram community. “Mushrooms have this historically bad rap. But every time I share my world with somebody, they’re completely in awe, like, ‘Wow, I did not know mushrooms were like that.’”
