NANPA and NFRCC Conventions

In the last month I’ve present programs for the North American Nature Photographers Assoc. annual summit in New Mexico and the Niagara Frontiers Camera Clubs Convention in New York. 

In February I presented a program called “Making A Living On The Art Show Circuit.  The program went well and had a good attendance.  I had the pleasure to hang out with some great photographers including Bill Fortney (Nikon liaison to the pros/owner of Great American Photo Workshops, and published photographer),  meet Art Wolfe, visited  with friends like my buddy and workshop partner Jack Graham who was there on a awards committee, and good friends Jim Clark  and Walt Anderson of Better Beamer.  http://nanpa.org/

Here I am at NANPA, the room was dark  so hard to see me up there.
Photo by Jack Graham with his G10.

The NFRCC Convention was last weekend and was a lot of fun.  Met a lot of great photographers and got to see some nice presentations, one which was Michael Reichmann of Luminous Landscapes website, and had to leave early Sunday so missed Rick Sammon’s presentation.  My presentation “Four Seasons Of Macro” was the opening presentation of the convention on Friday night.  I was followed by my friend Jack Graham who presented a program “20 Photography Tips.  On Saturday I set up some macro subjects that people could bring in their cameras and shoot. www.nfrcc.org

Essential Photo Gear

I found out about a company from my home state of Michigan, Essential Photo Gear,   they offer a variety of  unique photo gear for sale,  Take a minute and check them out. www.essentialphotogear.com.  While you’re at their site, click on the blog link.  They just started a new blog and they are doing something interesting, each week they will seach the internet for photographers blogs who have something interesting to say and they will link to the post.  So check out their blog also.

Running A Successful Nature Photography Business – Now On Sale

The new e-book is now on sale

Learn how to make money with your photography
see last post for more info.

Running A Successful Nature Photography Business

To order go to, www.MikeMoatsBooks.com

Running A Successful Nature Photography Business

Running A Successful Nature Photography Business

The book will be sold on a CD to be viewed on your computer.  The e-book teaches what I call streams of income and the more streams you use the more money you make.  

Sell prints through art shows
Sell prints through art galleries
Sell prints through art consultants
Sell prints online, through website
Sell images for stock (advertising, calendars, etc.)
Sell articles and images to nature photo magazines
Offer workshops
Offer online workshops
Publish books
Produce E- books
Produce how-to DVD’s
Find sponsors
Give presentations for photo conventions, camera clubs
Open your own gallery

I will breakdown and examine each of these fourteen streams of income.  How to find and approach galleries. You will get information on how to enter the art show business, from tents, walls, how to find and apply to the shows.  Selling your articles and images to magazines and setting up a workshop program.  Publishing your own books, produce DVD’s, finding sponsors, giving presentations, the reality of opening your own gallery. 

Use just a few streams to make some extra money or go all out full time.

You can start with one stream and add on each year, or if you’re really ambitious add two or three a year.   I got to all fourteen in four years.

The e-book will run $59.00 and be worth every penny as a time saver on learning all you need to know to get started making money with your nature photography.

To order go to,  www.MikeMoatsBooks.com

mgmoats@yahoo.com

Presenting At The 48th Annual NFRCC Convention

Jack Graham and I will be presenting a Macro & More talk at the 2009 48th Annual Niagara Frontier Regional Camera Clubs Convention. It will be held March 20,21 & 22nd at the Holiday Inn on Grand Island, NY. We will be presnting on Friday night, and on Saturday we will have subjects set-up for macro photographers to bring their cameras in and shoot. Other speakers are Michael Reichmann of Luminous Landscape, Rick Sammon, and more. See more details at; http://www.nfrcc.org/convention/speakers.php

Do You Have the Eighth Intelligence?

I’ve been reading an interesting book called “Last Child in the Woods” saving our children from nature-deficit disorder, written by Richard Louv.   The book reflects the growing international concerns about nature deficit in children and the corresponding social movement that has emerged in the United States, Canada, and other countries.  He talks about the people of the baby boomer and older age group that enjoyed a kind of free natural play in the outdoors that seems, in this era of kid pagers, instant messaging, Nintendo, like a quaint artifact.

One section that intrigued me was how Howard Gardner, a professor of education at Harvard, developed his influential theory of multiple intelligence in 1983.  Gardner argued that the traditional notion of intelligence, based on I.Q. testing, was far too limited; he instead proposed seven types of intelligence to account for a broader range of human potential in children and adults.

Linguistic intelligence,  “word smart”
Logical-mathematical intelligence, “number/reasoning smart”
Spatial intelligence “picture smart”
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence,  “body smart”
Musical intelligence, “music smart”
Interpersonal intelligence, “people smart”
Intrapersonal intelligence, “self smart”

Most recently he added an eighth intelligence: naturalist intelligence, “nature smart”.   Charles Darwin, John Muir, and Rachel Carson are examples of this. The core of the naturalist intelligence is the human ability to recognize plants, animals, and other parts of the natural environment, like clouds or rocks. Maybe this explains why some photographers have a natural ability to see and photograph things in nature that others walk right passed. 

Naturalist intelligence deals with sensing patterns in and making connections to elements in nature. Using this same intelligence, people possessing enhanced levels of this intelligence may also be very interested in other species, or in the environment and the earth. Children possessing this type of intelligence may have a strong affinity to the outside world or to animals, and this interest often begins at an early age. They may enjoy subjects, shows and stories that deal with animals or natural phenomena. Or they may show unusual interest in subjects like biology, zoology, botany, geology, meteorology, paleontology, or astronomy. People possessing nature smarts are keenly aware of their surroundings and changes in their environment, even if these changes are at minute or subtle levels. Often this is due to their highly-developed levels of sensory perception. Their heightened senses may help them notice similarities, differences and changes in their surroundings more rapidly than others. People with naturalistic intelligence may be able to categorize or catalogue things easily too. Frequently, they may notice things others might not be aware of. As children these people often like to collect, classify, or read about things from nature — rocks, fossils, butterflies, feathers, shells, and the like.

Do you have the Nature Smarts?

Diffraction In Macro

I’ve had many photographers that are curious about why I shoot most of my images at f/32.  To keep it simple and not get all techy, when you shoot with a lens stop down to the smallest aperture ( highest f/stop number)  you lose sharpness.  The ideal f/stop for sharpness is in the f/8 to f/11 range. I tend to shoot many of my images with everything in focus and the problem with macro is as we move in closer to the subject our depth of field shrinks and we have to increase the depth of field to bring the whole image in focus.  I did a test to show how the diffraction is not that drastic and with some sharpening it will bring the sharpness of the f/32 to equal the sharpness of the f/8 and allow me to get focus through out the whole image which the f/8 can’t do.  So you don’t have to freak out and worry about driffraction when you shoot at f/32. 

I shot this peacock feather with a Tamron 90mm macro lens.  The feather is lying flat and the lens is at eight inches away at a very slight angle.  I shot at f/8, f/11, f/22 and f/32 to show the difference in sharpness between the four f/stops. 

These shots are right out of my Fuji S5 camera with no sharpening.

 

This is the f/8 and as you can see its sharp in the middle but even with shooting at only a slight angle the f/8 fails to bring it all in focus.

The second shot was set at f/11 and you can see good sharpness in the center and a little more focus at the corner but still not enough.

This was shot at f/22 and you can see we have good sharpness in the center and a little more sharpness at the corners.

On the last shot at f/32 we still maintain good sharpness in the center and we have good sharpness at the corners. 

 

On the next four images I blew up the center of the sharpest part of the f/8 shot, which was the center of the image, and compared it with the  same part of the others to see the difference.

This is the f/8 and you can see it is nice and sharp.

This is the f/11 and about the same in sharpness.

This is the f/22 and you can see its a little less sharp.

This is the f/32 and it has a softer look but not bad.

Now here is the f/32 with sharpening at 120% and as you can see the sharpness is back in and looks as good as shooting at f/8 to f/11.   I may have even added more sharpening than was needed so I might back it off to the 100 range.

So now I have an image that has every part of the image in focus and with a little sharpening my image has the same sharpness as shooting in the f/8 to f/11 range and the diffraction is not a problem. 

So as you can see diffraction isn’t this big scary thing and shooting stopped down works. It allows me to maintain focus throughout an image and still get good quality on sharpness.