A few years ago I saw an image of a large millipede posted on facebook, and I thought it was such an awesome subject, but figured I would never get a chance to shoot one as I had never even seen one live before.  I was in Louisville, KY, teaching my Macro Boot Camp, and I had Mike Matthews and his frogs and reptiles coming in for a few hours for my workshop participants to photograph. I got a chance before the workshop to go to Mike's home photo studio to do some shooting of the critters.  Mike told me he just caught a large millipede on his driveway the day before, and brought it out to show me.  I was really excited because I told him about the image I had seen of a millipede and that I always wanted to photograph one, but never ever expected to have an opportunity to photograph one, and here it is.  Mike brought it out and it went into a perfect curl, just like the one in the image I saw years ago.  Just lucky timing to get a chance to shoot this cool subject.

I've heard it said, "you should learn the rules, then break the rules."  

Well, if you plan to break the rules, why bother even learning the rules, just make up your own rules.

I tend to follow most of the rules, as they have been working for hundreds of years, why mess with something that works.

Just my humble opinion.

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It's the end of August and only about another month for shooting spider webs before the weather here in Michigan starts to get some frost and kill off all the critters. 

Here is a collection of past spiderweb shots.  

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To many photographers think that if they buy a better camera they will make better images.  They spend most of their time on tech sites where they give you the updates on the latest greatest equipment offered.

If I post here on this blog about some new Tamron lens or some equipment important to what we do as macro photographers, I get tons of hits on those posts.  If I post something about composition, or subject matter, I get far fewer hits on those posts. People have it backwards.

My most successful image I ever shot was of a green fern on a black burned tree trunk (below) and that image won more awards, published in photo mags more times than any other of my images, the full rights to the image was bought by Hewlett Packard for all advertising, and made more money than any image I ever produced, and it was shot in 2004, with a Fuji S2, 6 megapixel camera with an old macro lens from my film camera.  That system was many generations ago in the digital world and it produced my most successful image.

That image did well because it was a great subject and composed well.  It had nothing to do with the camera.  Because if it was about the equipment, then I should be producing more successful images with my more advanced system I use today.

My last three camera bodies (Nikon D7000, Nikon D7500, Fuji X-T30 mirrorless) sold for under $1,000, so you don't need and expensive camera body to produce beautiful macro images. Only reason I upgraded from my Nikon D7000 of 8 years, to the Nikon D7500 was because I wanted a articulating LCD, and not because my D7000 wasn't producing great images. If you can afford more expensive camera bodies, there is nothing wrong with that, but it's not required to make great macro images.  

Once you've acquired a good camera body and macro lens, stop wasting time on the tech sites, and spend your time learning about what makes an image successful. 

Having the tools to produce quality images, but not knowing the difference between good and bad subject matter, and how to compose a subject properly, is going to keep you producing poor images.

If you are one of those photographers that spends all your time on tech sites, change your direction.

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When I got my first digital DSLR in 2004, it was a Fuji S2.  That camera had only 6 megapixels.  When framing my subjects, I did the same as I would have framing in the film days, trying to get the framing done without any post processing cropping.  With a 6 meg file, you couldn't do much cropping and retain all the quality of the image. 

I used that camera for a few years and with the next generation of digital cameras, I had now 12 megapixels, but still continued to frame my subjects to prevent any post processed cropping.

As the camera's megapixels continued to move to larger numbers, I would hear photographers say they are now just shooting larger areas, and cropping what they want, and not losing any image quality with the larger megapixels in the camera.

Next camera was up to 16 megapixels but even though other photographers were telling me they were shooting larger areas of the subjects, and cropping out what they wanted, I still continued to frame so I needed to crop less.

Next was my Nikon D7500 which was 20.9 megapixels, so I test shot subjects framing larger areas, and did some tight crops, and found that the image quality was pretty good.

My latest camera, a mirrorless Fuji X-T30 MKll has 26 megapixels, and my post processing crops are getting even smaller.

So now, my new philosophy is to frame a larger area, and crop in post. 

It does make it easier and saves me time on framing, as I don't have to be so precise in the field.   

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Info and to sign up. 

MACRO PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer