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Shooting Crazy Ferns

June 12, 2026

On Madeline Island in Lake Superior north of Wisconsin teaching a workshop and out shooting before the students show up on Sunday.I got out early this morning to photograph a very nice group of ferns.I'm not interested in shooting the plain boring ferns, I am looking for the crazy ferns. Here are a few I shot. 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 ...

Easy Focusing

June 7, 2026

For the last 20 years I've been teaching macro photography workshops and I've always told photographers to manually focus on your subject. With my mirrorless camera, I just have to look at the subject framed up on the LCD and decide where I want the focus and touch that spot, and the camera focuses right where I want it.So much easier and faster than looking through the viewfinder and rotating the focus ring until I got the focus on the spot of the subject where I wanted ...

Before and After - Joe-Pye Weed

June 2, 2026

Here is the finished image. I liked the little vine that was growing around the stem and through the top of the flowers. Fuji X-T30 MKll Tamron 18-300f/32 @ 1/125sec, ISO2000Printed background behind the flower.Creative processing with Smart Photo Editor. 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

My Very First Subject I Photographed

May 31, 2026

In the year 2001 I decided to purchase some camera equipment and go out into nature and have some fun.It was November when I receive my used Nikon N80 film camera along with a tripod, some lenses all bought used from eBay.It was a Saturday morning before daybreak when I drove out to a local park to capture my first images with my camera gear.I got there before the sun came over the horizon as my thought was to shoot the sunrise.I had no idea what I was doing but guess I would figure it out as I ...

The Benefits of Macro Photography

May 30, 2026

After a few years photography landscapes, I found my calling, passion, and career as a macro photographer. It wasn’t my intentions to shoot macro as my interest in my new hobby in the beginning was to be a landscape photographer. I had studied all the great landscape images that were printed on the pages of “Outdoor Photographer” and decided that was what I wanted to shoot. With my limited time and budget to travel to the national parks where the best landscapes were, and only ...

Focus Stacking - Waste of Time

May 28, 2026

Many of my images I post are of subjects with everything in focus and sharp, and I always get people asking if the image was focus stacked. If you are shooting close-ups you will get everything in focus using the lenses highest f/stops. Why would you want to shoot a group of many images at different focus points throughout the subject, then have to download however number of images you shot into a program and have that program merge all the images together getting the whole ...

Before and After - Cup Flower Backside

May 26, 2026

I always talk about making sure to check out the backside of flower because sometimes you can find a cool image.With this image I wanted to create a painted look so found filters in Smart Photo Editor and came up with this. Here is 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

Flowers at the Garden Center

May 25, 2026

While at the local garden center picking up flowers for the flowerpots, I will see flowers I find interesting, so I pull out my cell phone and photograph them.Here are two flowers that I show the before and after creative processing done with Smart Photo Editor. Before After Before After 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 ...

Don't Limit Yourself to Just Flowers, Expand Your Subject Matter

May 22, 2026

It seems when it comes to macro photography the number one subject that photographers shoot is flower and followed by bugs. Flowers are beautiful colorful subjects that are easy to find and can be shot outside or inside making them the most popular subject to shoot.I think people forget there are tons of other subjects to shoot when it comes to macro photography.It can be lots of fun spending time in nature searching out all these examples of subjects you can shoot. So many ...

Photographing Flowers on a Light Box

May 18, 2026

The May monthly zoom meeting for my Flower Photography Club online will cover photographing flowers on a light box.Wednesday the 20th at 5pm eastern time zone.You must be a member of the club to attend. Meeting recorded if you can't attend.Padma Inguva.Program Description: Photographing Flowers on a Lightbox.In this presentation, Padma invites you into her creative process for crafting luminous floral portraits using a lightbox. She will share how to select flowers that reveal their inner ...