Wednesday, June 24, 2026
By Mike Moats Photography
I was driving on I-75 to the hotel for my weekend Macro Seminar in the Cincinnati area, and I saw a sign that said Cox Arboretum Gardens. I got off at the next exit and was hoping they might have a little indoor arboretum because it was a bit windy, and I didn’t figure I would have much luck shooting flowers outside.
They didn’t have an indoor garden, but what the heck, I’m here, might as well check out the outdoor gardens. Because it’s late in the season, most of the flowers were past their prime other then the mums, and again, much to windy anyways. The gardens did have some succulents that were not effected by the wind, but most I had seen before and wasn’t interested. I did happen to find one interesting succulent that was low to the ground and all though moving slightly in the wind, I was able to get a few shots. I really liked the look of this plant, but didn’t think that I would end up with anything spectacular. It was the only thing I shot, so thought it was just a waste of time.
When I got to the hotel, I had some time to play with some images I shot earlier at an airplane museum. After finishing with the plane images I decided to check out the interesting succulent I had shot. I ran it through the filters in Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 4, and when I clicked on the Solarization filter, Bam! Wow! what a look this filter gave this subject. I love what that filter did to this image.
So I got a great image from just one subject shot at the arboretum, when I originally thought I had wasted my time going there, so sometimes you just never know where your next great image will come from.
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