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Thursday, February 27, 2025
By Mike Moats Photography

End of February makes you start to think spring is coming soon. 

In a couple weeks we'll start to see the green tips of the daffodils sprouting from the flower beds in the yard. 

Lily of the Valley flowers will be one of the early spring flowers that I search for in the wooded areas at the parks near my home. 

They are tough to shoot. So low to the ground making it hard on the body. 

You can see in this image the trees have not yet leafed out and ground is baren of any plant life other than the Lily of the Valley flowers. Can't wait.

Booking camera club zoom meetings, need a speaker, let me know, macrogeekmike@yahoo.com

Join my Macro Photo Club online. Over 280 instructional videos. Over 2800 members from 29 countries. 
Info and to sign up. 

MACRO PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

Also Check out my workshops and zoom programs.

WORKSHOPS - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

 
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
By Mike Moats Photography

Prairie Coneflowers - Stony Creek Metro Park, MI

Fuji X-T30 MKll Tamron 18-300 f/32 @1/20sec, ISO2000

Creative Processing in Smart Photo Editor.

Original out of the camera.

Booking camera club zoom meetings, need a speaker, let me know, macrogeekmike@yahoo.com

Join my Macro Photo Club online. Over 280 instructional videos. Over 2800 members from 29 countries. 
Info and to sign up. 

MACRO PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

Also Check out my workshops and zoom programs.

WORKSHOPS - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

 
Tuesday, February 25, 2025
By Mike Moats Photography

Shot this last year at the Chicago Botanical Gardens. They have a huge rose garden.

Here is the processed image in Smart Photo Editor.

Here is the original out of the camera.

Booking camera club zoom meetings, need a speaker, let me know, macrogeekmike@yahoo.com

Join my Macro Photo Club online. Over 280 instructional videos. Over 2800 members from 29 countries. 
Info and to sign up. 

MACRO PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

Also Check out my workshops and zoom programs.

WORKSHOPS - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

 
Monday, February 24, 2025
By Mike Moats Photography

I was at one of my local parks and came across this downed decayed tree trunk with some dewy weird looking fungus going on top.  As I moved in close it looked like tiny little trumpets growing out of the mossy material.

 

Set up my tripod, got the camera in really close with a macro lens. Here is the result.

Booking camera club zoom meetings, need a speaker, let me know, macrogeekmike@yahoo.com

Join my Macro Photo Club online. Over 280 instructional videos. Over 2800 members from 29 countries. 
Info and to sign up. 

MACRO PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

Also Check out my workshops and zoom programs.

WORKSHOPS - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

 
Sunday, February 23, 2025
By Mike Moats Photography

Back in the early 2,000s I was known as the leaf guy.  I was on a site called naturephotographers.net posting one leaf image after another.  

I was fascinated with all the different kinds of leaves and all the different ways to photograph them in different kinds of backgrounds though out the four seasons. 

On naturephotographers.net I was getting a lot of attention for my leaf images as I was producing unique images that no one else was showing. 

It was my own unique style and look. This went on for a couple years and I remember a photographer friend who is a successful commercial photographer telling me that this was a phase that I would grow out of.

I thought no way, I going to being shooting leaves for a long time, but he was right as there came a point that I had tired of shooting leaves, and it was time to move on.

Over the 20 years I have been creating macro/close-up images I have found myself continually growing as a photographer.  

I've gone through many styles, shooting soft focus, shooting with everything in focus, working with special lighting effects, shooting all forms of nature and non-nature subjects, and using different kinds of creative post processing techniques and so on.

My latest style is to shoot with everything in focus at the highest f/stops, like f/32. 

I teach how to get everything in focus without having to focus stack and how to correct the softness from diffraction when shooting in higher f/stop numbers.

For many years I taught how to shoot a subject completely in focus while blurring the background into a solid color allowing the viewer to see a subject without any distractions.

In recent years I no longer teach that method, as I've simplified ways of getting the same results of a blurred background using printed backgrounds that I've created and placed behind the subject to avoid the clutter.

All these years I have created these images with clean backgrounds, but recently I have grown tired of the solid blurred background and have started adding creative textures in the backgrounds through post processing programs.  

For the last five years Smart Photo Editor has been my go-to software for enhancements to my images, and if you see my recent images that I have posted you may have noticed this change happening.

The point of this post is that we are always growing as photographers and that's a good thing, it keeps us inspired and it makes photography fun as these changes happen.

Booking camera club zoom meetings, need a speaker, let me know, macrogeekmike@yahoo.com

Join my Macro Photo Club online. Over 280 instructional videos. Over 2800 members from 29 countries. 
Info and to sign up. 

MACRO PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

Also Check out my workshops and zoom programs.

WORKSHOPS - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer