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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MACRO PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

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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MACRO PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

For most of my years shooting macro and close-up photography I have mainly used a Sigma 180mm and Tamron 90mm lens. 

A few years ago, I started using the new zoom lenses from Tamron, the 18-270, 16-300, 18-400, and the 18-300 on my mirrorless camera. 

The other change in the last couple years are the larger megapixels on my latest cameras.  At 26 megapixels I can do some small crops and still get a good quality image. 

My new way of shooting is I don't have to worry about perfectly framing my subject and then just crop out the subject in post processing.

As you can see in this image, I just framed a large area with my zoom lens and crop in post.

When I get home, I download the image and just crop out what I want. Add an artistic filter for the background in Smart Photo Editor and done.

January 2nd, sign up for my new online Flower Photography Club. For more info about this new club, click the link below.

FLOWER PHOTO CLUB - Mike Moats - Award Winning Macro Photographer

When I was in the art show biz for seven years, I sold thousands of my images. I averaged 25 shows a year, and the smallest attended show would draw 25,000 and the largest crowds were at the Ann Arbor Art Fair that drew 500,000 attendees.

In the first year I hung some framed images of my soft-focus flower images alongside of the everything in focus images. 

On a few occasions I overheard different customers talking about the out of focus images and didn't understand them and thought I must not know what I'm doing because these few images were not sharp throughout.

After that first year all the soft-focus images were removed from the booth and replaced with everything in focus images.

No one was buying the soft-focus images, only the everything in focus images.  This is partly why you see my style of shooting tend to be all in focus shot at f/32. 

My thought is that most people photograph subjects with their phone's camera, or point and shoot cameras, and what those cameras do best is get everything in focus.

So, they figure when they make photos, they are all in focus, so how come this photographer in an art show can't get his images all in focus with better equipment.

It's like you're shooting at f/32 with those systems.

I photographed my tripod set-up shooting flowers on the side of my house, and instead of using one of my cameras to take the picture, I just used my cell phone. 

Just like shooting my cameras at f/32 the cell phone captured everything in focus from front all the way to the arborvitaes which were about 30 yards in the background.

So, my cell phone camera is like shooting my cameras at f/32. 

Here is the flower I was shooting.

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

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