Mike Moats

Saturday and Sunday June 28th and 29th, I’m showing in the Crosby Fine Art Fair at the Toledo Botanical Garden. The show runs 10:00am till 7:00pm on Saturday, and 10:00am till 4:00pm on Sunday.  Come say hi if your in the area.

I will be at the Northville Fine Art Show in Michigan on, Saturday and Sunday the 21st and 22nd. The show is held in the downtown streets.  Show hours, 10a.m. to 5p,m.  Come say hi if your in the area. Here’s another lensbaby shot, its the center of a dandelion.  Any one interested in buying a lensbaby (www.lensbaby,com) email me and I can get you a 10 percent discount from lensbaby.

Tomorrow evening, Tuesday June 17th I will be presenting a talk about composition to the  South Lyon Fine Art Society.  It wll be held at the South Lyon Public Library in Michigan.   Its open to the public and anyone reading this and lives in the area is welcome to come out tomorrow night at about 7:30 p.m.

I will be heading out in the morning to do an art show at Crocker Park in Westlake, Ohio. Crocker Park is about 20 miles west of Cleveland.   Shows on Saturday and Sunday.  Tomorrow I will be going to shoot at the Bradley Woods Reservation, one of the Cleveland Metroparks. Here’s another of my lensbaby images. I gave this one a nice soft focus look.  If anyone is looking to purchase a new lensbaby, email me (mgmoats@yahoo.com) and I can get you a 10 percent discount from lensbaby.

After the tide came back in and ended my tide pool shoot on the Oregon coast, I retreated to the beach to look for subjects to shoot. I found some feathers in the sand that had some interesting comps. I will be talking with Jack Graham in the up coming weeks to plan another of the “Macro & More” workshops for Oregon in 2009. We’ve already had inquries for next year.

Here’s a nice tight shot of a flower I don’t remember the name of, was done with a Lensbaby (www.lensbaby.com).  A very cool little lens that does some great abstracty macro images.  On this one I used their 10+ and 4+ magnifiers to get in really close.  The magnifiers allow you to focus in as close as an inch.  If anyone out there is looking to purchase a Lensbaby, email me (mgmoats@yahoo.com) and I can give you a code that will get you 10 percent off on a new lensbaby.  You’ll have a lot of fun with this little guy.

Here’s another shot from the tide pool on the Oregon coast.  A star fish with some other critters clinging to the side of a huge rock as tall as me.

While I was out In Oregon co teaching the Macro & More workshop along with good friend and great photogrpaher Jack Graham, I was treated to my first expereince of shooting a tide pool.  If you every get to the Oregon coast please take time to explore these, as they offer a tremendous amount of macro images.  Many large rocks as tall as me are just totally cover with life forms.    My only regret was we only had about two hours until ther tide came back in.  So I was like a mad man shooting.  Here’s a shot of a green anemone.

Last week Jack Graham and I presented a “Marco & More In The Gorge Workshop”.
It was held in the Columbia River Gorge area of Oregon.  A beautiful place with
great waterfalls, landscapes and plenty of wildflowers for macro work. We had a
awesome group of photographers that were a pleasure to work with.  Everyone got
along really well and all had a great time.  I saw a number of excellent images taken
by the participants.  The weather was hot but better that’s better than dealing with rain.
  I was able to shot some really nice stuff myself that I’ll post in the future.  A shot I
was looking to get was of the poppy flowers.  I’ve admired shots I’ve seen of these, and
have always hope to get a chance to shoot them.  In 2009 Jack and I will repeat this
workshop and also will be adding the tide pools from the coast.  The tide pools are very
cool with tons of macro opportunities, and I’ll post some image I shot there.  

Found these two nice fiddleheads but didn’t like the background, so I placed this skunk cabbage leaf behind them.

I got hold a lensbaby, which is a neat little lens that does great work for marco lovers. Check it out at www.lensbaby.com  I’ll post more of the images shot with the lensbaby. You can go to my website, www.tinylandscapes.com and click on the link that says Lensbaby Images.

My first day out shooting this spring.  The skunk cabbage leaves are starting to sprout.  I found this old snail’s shell, and thought it would be a nice contrasting subject for this skunk cabbage leaf.

This was shot in early spring as the snow melted and left pools of water in the flood plain of stoney creek.

The Skunk Cabbage plant is the first sign of life in the north as we head torwards spring. These interesting plants have a built in heating systems that allows it to melt through the ice in the swampy areas that it grows in.  You will start to see them here in southeast Michigan around the end of Feburary, providing we don’t have a blanket of snow covering them. You can see the ice surrounding this one.

As spring approaches and the snow melts into the river and produces some fast moving currents.  Here’s one from last year that I found with a face in the flow.

 Shot some flowers that I used for one of my intermediate macro workshops.  I pulled off one of the petals to expose the insides.

Here’s my green shot for SPD. This is a backlit Skunk Cabbage leaf.  The backlighting is from a early morning sun.  In the next few week these leaves will be poping up in the swampy areas, can’t wait!!

I got out to shoot yesterday for the first time in a couple of months.  Still to much snow on the ground and was very limited on subjects to shoot.  This is one the few shots I took.  I’ll hold off for a couple more weeks and hope for some warm temps to melt off the snow.                           

Here’s another of the leaves from the swamp series. Last shot was Maples this time its Oaks.
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