I was shooting at the San Diego Botanical Gardens when I saw this flower and I thought it was a good subject for using the Zoom Blur filter in Photoshop.

Here is the original image, I started with some clean up with the specs of debris, and filled in the gaps between the petals showing any background, and did a slight crop.

After doing the clean up in Photoshop Elements, I then clicked on “Filters”.

In the next box place your cursor on “Blur”, and then click on “Radial Blur”.

In the next box look for “Zoom” and click the circle next to it.

Use the Amount slider to add or subtract the amount of the Zoom you want, and this is what I came up with.

After I got the zoom the way I wanted it, I went into Nik Softwares Viveza, and did some tweaking with the structure slider to bring out the details in the petals, and darkened and added structure in the dark center. Then popped the yellow a little more.

This effect works best with the flowers center placed in the middle of the frame like you see in these two images.

Here is another example.

Join my Macro Photo Club https://www.tinylandscapes.com/macro-photo-club

Save yourself some time learning flower photography by joining my Flower Photography Club online. Learn from the experts. FLOWER PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

Here is a pair of flowers I shot at the Chicago Botanical Gardens and decided to do a painted look in Smart Photo Editor.

Now the original out of the camera.

Save yourself some time learning flower photography by joining my Flower Photography Club online. Learn from the experts. FLOWER PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

I've heard many photographers say that macro/close-up photography is not easy to do.  I totally disagree, it's actually very easy to do. 

There are just some basic things you need to know to get nice sharp all in focus or soft-focus images.

For close-up photography you don't need to focus stack; you can get it all in focus with one shot. How to avoid shooting in clutter is easy to do.

You can buy the lowest priced digital DSLR or mirrorless cameras, any macro or zoom lens and produce excellent macro/close-up images.

Save yourself some time learning flower photography by joining my Flower Photography Club online. Learn from the experts. FLOWER PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

Just north of Imlay City, Michigan there is the Ankley Family farm.  They charge a crazy low price of $10 to photograph the flower and sunflower fields.   I make one trip there each year, and typically wait until fall when the temps cool down. They have great Dahlias, and I mainly shoot the front side, but also watch for a good view of the backside. Here is the finished processed image. 

Here is the photo that came out of the camera.  As you can see, I used one of my printed backgrounds and shot it at f/32 for maximum depth of field. I used my Tamron 18-300 lens on the Fuji X-T30 MKll.

I cropped and used Smart Photo Editor to do the process you see in the finished image.

Save yourself some time learning flower photography by joining my Flower Photography Club online. Learn from the experts. FLOWER PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

When I came up with the idea of an online Flower Photography Club my goal was to teach flower photographers a wide variety of techniques and styles of photographing flowers.

I have my style which is photographing flowers where everything in the image is in focus. I do have a lot of follower's and photographers that have followed my teachings and like what I do.

I do know that there are many other styles of flower photography that I don't teach so I set up experts in other styles of flower photography to teach the members.

The Flower Photography Club has a private Facebook group for the members to share their images from what they have learned from the different presenters.

What is rewarding for me is to see someone post an image with a new technique or style that they learned from a presenter and how excited they are to be expanding their flower portfolio of images and how much fun they are having learning new things.

Also, it is nice to see all the great comments complimenting the speakers on their presentations meaning I have chosen good people to teach them.

So, the new club is working out exactly how I had hoped it would.

We now are up to 652 as of this posting and if you are interested in joining and learning, here is a link to the info about the club.

FLOWER PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer