My interview for  Tamron’s View Finder Enewsletter,http://www.tamron.com/enews/archives/dec09_moats.asp

Outdoor Photo Gear is now carrying my e-books for sale.  http://www.outdoorphotogear.com/blog/

Here’s some info about Outdoor Photo Gear http://www.outdoorphotogear.com/store/

Our goal at Outdoor Photo Gear is to provide you with the best selection of quality photo gear at the best prices, while giving you the very best customer service you will find online anywhere.

At Outdoor Photo Gear, we work right next to the products we sell and our shelves are always fully stocked. Having inventory in-stock, and close at hand gives us, and you, a real advantage. We can answer your questions while physically holding the product so you can get the answers to your most-important questions. Also, when you call or email us we can double-check stock-levels for you when delivery of a time-sensitive order is critical. At Outdoor Photo Gear we personally pick, pack, and ship the products to your door; according to your specifications.

We believe that running a great store is the same as taking a great photograph: you have to— “be there.”

To us, “outdoor” photography encompasses all types of photography: wildlife, nature, avian, landscape, travel, journalism, adventure and event photography. We want to bring you great products and advice that moves you outside and into the wide world of outdoor photography. We invite you to capture your world, and bring it inside to us all through your images.

I was doing a workshop in California and a photographer was doing some image processing with Viveza from Nik Software.  I was blown away by the effectiveness and simplicity of the program. Much easier to process select areas then photoshop.  Check them out at www.niksoftware.com  They also have some other great programs like Color Efex Pro, Difine, Sharpener Pro, Silver Efex Pro.  Check them out, and if you are interested in ordering any of the programs I can get you a fifteen percent discount.  Email me for the promo code and save 15% on your order. mgmoats@yahoo.com

I see many times people posting interest in taking their hobby of nature photographer to the pro level. Myself and I’m sure other pros have people that contact them asking for advice on what it takes to make a living in this field. My response is that from my experience it’s a seven day work week and can be tough on your family life. I work about forty weekends a year so any family birthdays, holidays, christenings, father and mothers days, sports, concerts, etc, are all missed. Nature photography is one of the toughest fields of photography to make a living in. I’ve found that for me being diversified is the key to making it. Having multiple streams of income keeps the money flowing. Those streams all take a lot of time to keep them flowing.

Marketing is number one, nobody knows you’re alive and in business unless you tell them. Shameless self promotion is something you have to get used to and you need to be the type of person that doesn’t mind this type of marketing as some would consider this bragging about yourself, but it’s just getting the word out that you’re in business and having some success at what you’re doing. I spend a lot of my time marketing, as I moderate on three photography sites, post images, post on Facebook and Twitter, and reply to photographers sending me emails with questions.

I display my images in about twenty five art shows a year. This takes up twenty five of my weekends, many away from home. The shows start in April and run until November and consume almost every weekend for those months. Some of the shows I’m gone on Friday and return on Monday, leaving me Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, to print, package, and pack for the next weekend. During the winter months I’m going though the process of applying to these shows, which is filling out applications, sending images for the jury process, writing out checks for show fees, etc, keeping it all organized so I have a show every weekend. Taking time to keep track of materials and doing all the ordering and always trying to find the best prices. During the winter when I apply to these shows the jury fees and booth fees run about seven thousand dollars, which I won’t see again for months.

During the art shows off season I’m presenting my workshops. I do about twenty five workshops which most are on weekends and some are during the week days. This take time promoting the workshops, adding them to my website and blog, sending out emails and post cards, posting them on nature photography websites, posting on Facebook, etc. I have to call and set dates and times with some of the hotels that I hold them in. I have a macro boot camp coming up next year, which is taking a lot of time contacting companies to help sponsor this program. Working with the hotel, finding other hotel options for those coming in from out of town if the room price is too high at the hotel where the workshop is held. Getting the doorprizes from the sponsors. Planning the workshops and how they will run. Shooting images for examples in what I’m teaching in the workshops.

Wow, I’m already tired and I haven’t scratched the surface on what I do. While all this craziness is going on with the art shows and workshops,

I have to maintain my moderater duties online.

I work with art consultants that buy images for their design projects, print the images, package, ship, and invoice them.

I contact companies that would be willing to sponsor me, work with them when they need images for ads, photo conventions, sometimes even go to photo convention for them. I send them promos for my workshops that they can list on their websites.

I do online workshops, which takes time again promoting, critiquing the participants shooting assignments.

I have a how to macro book that took time to write and have printed, I have to maintain stock at Amazon, maintain on my store front sales, packaging and shipping to customers.

I have three e-book completed and am working on more. Again more promotion, sales and sending the e-books online. I also make them into CDs to sell at the art shows.

I’m looking into doing how-to macro video for next year.

I travel and present programs for camera clubs, photo conventions, garden clubs for flower photography, have done some at REI stores.

Send submission to magazine with article ideas, and once accepted working with the mag to set-up the article and images. Invoice them. I’m working on one now for OP.

Send out information introducing myself to new art consultants, interior designers, calendar companies. etc. reply to their emails as they contact me asking questions about pricing, printing, etc.

I maintain a blog which I write and post as frequently as possible and I write when possible for Tamron’s blog. Post on facebook any updates on workshops, art shows, and any other happenings.

Maintain a website, posting new images updating art shows and workshop schedules.

I will visit and sell through art galleries, so time is spend traveling to the galleries maintaining stock.

I have companies that contact me for stock images, negotiate, send files, and invoice them.

I get to beta test new products for companies, and they always wait till the last minute to send you the product and need a response NOW! Take time to work with the product, Email back and forth with response.

I have charities that call and ask for print donations which I always do. Deal with emails, set-up time to make contact with prints.

Take care of all the accounting, sales, taxes, keeping track of cost of running the business.

Wow, all this work is making me tired, I need a nap.

Now are you starting to wonder why I haven’t mention anything about shooting. As you can see there is not much time left to shoot. It can be frustrating and hard to schedule time to shoot, as you have probably heard most pros say that the business takes up ninety percent of their time. I do make time to shoot but it has to be scheduled at the peak times which for me are the spring and fall. The summer I almost never get out to shoot as the art shows consume so much time, but I make the majority of my money selling prints at the shows.

I have to say I’m pretty sure there are a few more thing I do, but I think you’re getting the point. If I tried to make it on any one of these streams alone it would be tough, but with a little income coming from all these streams I do very well, but I sacrifice a lot of time and family life to maintain this business.

I have to say even with all the work I do I can’t wait to wake up in the morning at five o’clock and get to work. I wouldn’t trade what I do with anything else. I always tell people where can you work where people are complimenting you while handing you money, love it.

Good luck if you give it a shot.

In April of 2010 I will be co-teaching with Jack Graham our “Macro and More” workshop for the Great American Photography Workshops.  I am honored to be part of one the countries leading companies offering workshops.  Well known photographer like Galen Rowell, John Shaw, Art Wolf, Bill Fortney have all taught workshops fo GAPW. They are Sponsored by Nikon, Fujifilm, Epson, Outdoor Photographer Magazine.  Here is the workshop Jack and I will be presenting, and to register go to GAPW website http://gaphotoworks.com

I will be posting some of the new stuff for 2010 in the next few days.  First in the beginning of the year I will teach a Photoshop and Nik Software workshop.  This class will be for beginners to intermediates and those who would like to learn more about the incredible Nik Sofware programs like Viveza, Color Efex Pro, Dfine, Sharpener Pro, Silver Efex Pro. You will be amazed when you see the Nik Viveza work, simplicity and effectiveness at its best.  The workshop will run three hours and will be held on January 16th,2010 at the ConCorde Inn,   Rochester Hills,   Michigan.  Cost $39.00 contact me if would like more info. mgmoats@yahoo.  To register with credit card call me at (586)770-3992 or (586)264-7100.

I’ve never been good at learning from reading, so when I buy a product that  needs  assembling, I look at the picture on the box and put it together.  My wife always yells at me, get the instructions before you start messing with it.  Reading instructions is always frustrating as I have a hard time trying to figure out what they are telling me to do, so I get upset and just figure it out on my own. 

My learning process in macro photography has been much the same, as I have been totally self-taught in shooting, depth of field, composition, exposure, processing in photoshop, printing, and the business end of nature photography. 

In 2001  I bought my first 35mm SLR and a few lenses off eBay.  I went to the Barnes and Noble bookstore and purchased a few nature photography books.  Like the instructions that come with a new product, I had a hard time understanding what the books were teaching me, so I just went out on my own learning and having fun through trail and error. 

When I started shooting with my first Digital SLR I decided to shoot using the fine  jpeg format.  At the time I wasn’t interested in the RAW system as it seemed like it used to much file space, and my 512ram, slow processors took longer to work an image, so the jpeg format just seemed to make my experience with photography easier. 

I bought my first printer an Epson 1280  which printed to 13″X19″ .  I  processed  my jpegs through a free 2.0 Photoshop Elements program I got with the 1280 printer and then print them out.  I was amazed at the excellent quality of the images and the prints. 

Even though I wasn’t very knowledgable in the process of digital photography and printing, the system I was using  looked  every bit as good as anything I was seeing from the photographers at the local art shows or galleries.

Four years ago I enter the art show business and to date I do about twenty-five shows a year.  I also show in a few galleries, had tons of images published and have won numerous local and international awards. All with jpegs and my PS Elements program.

After I got into digital I started to play on the internet at some of the nature photography sites, www.naturephotographers.net and www.birdphotographers.net (it ain’t just for birds) I began reading posts in the photography forums talking about the digital process like jpegs versus raw, processing images, saving in jpegs, tiff, or PSD files, and all the technical stuff.  What I was reading said that basically everything I was doing was wrong.  I’m shooting jpegs when I should be shooting raw files, I was saving the images as jpegs when I should have been saving them as tiffs or PSDs.

I was scratching my head as my prints look as good as everybody elses and I’m doing it all wrongs according to the experts. 

I’m not saying I’m right and everyone else is wrong, but as my photographer friend Jack Graham says the proof is in the print, and I agree with that, whatever process you use that produces a great print go with it. 

The other day a  photographer friend and I were talking about all this stuff about shooting jegs, compression issues, and saving images as tiffs rather than jpeg.  Now I know all about the compression of a jpeg and that when it saves an image the compression throws out information in details, color, etc.  All I can say it must be throwing out all the crap because it leaves my jpegs with plenty enough good stuff to produce and excellent image when printed even up to the largest I can now print 24″ X 36″.  I also understand that the raw file is easier to adjust exposure for the landscape people with the problems of high dynamic range, but in macro I don’t run into this issue very often, and I can usually correct it in the field. 

My friend says to me, well what about when you have to do some reprocessing work on the image, you lose file quality every time you open and resave the image.  He says that isn’t a problem when you use a tiff file, you can open, do some tweaks and close without any damage to the file.  I don’t know about that, but when I process an image and get it where I what it for print I save it one time and I’m done.  I don’t go back over and over redoing the image.  He says but everytime you open it to print do you resave it.  I said no after I print I just click don’t save and it revents back to what it was before I opened it. 

Have you ever seen the  TV program called myth busters, I decided to do my own myth busters and test my method of how I process and print my images against all the info I read on the forums and what every photog tells me.  I need to at least investigate to see if maybe my images could somehow look better saving in tiffs and also wanted to see if I opened, reworked and resaved a file would it cause a noticable difference in the final print.

I’m printing this test on a Epson 7880 large format 24″ printer, so  no one can say well you’re using a crappy printer so the test is flawed.   

I picked an image that has been my best seller over the last four years, and it will be my test image.  I took the original jpeg and did my normal processing in PS Elements and saved it as a jpeg.  Took the original again and did the exact same processing and saved as a Tiif file.   I then open the jpeg and sized it to 18″ X 24″ at 300 dpi and printed it.    I did the same for the tiff file and printed.    The jpeg file when saved at this size came out at 21 megs. and the tiff file at this size was a whopping 130 megs.  I guess you would think with all those extra megs the tiff would kick the jpegs butt.  Because you remember the jpeg compression throws out all that details, color,etc. info.  

Well listen up people!  the prints look identical.  I can’t tell any difference from the over bloated tiff file from the puny jpeg file. I even went back and lowered the DPI to 200 on the jpeg image to see if there would be quality differences and when printed it looked the same as the others.  So with this test why would I ever save as a tiff and deal with clogging up hard drives, slowing processing when I’m not getting any improvements.

The second issue, if I open a jpeg, do a little tweak and resave it will it show a decrease in quality in the print.  I figured why just open and resave it one time, I’ll do it five times, that should show a difference if there is any.  I open the jpeg, went into Nik Softwares Viveza and did a little tweak to a leaf in the image.  I then resaved and closed the image.  I reopened it and did another tweak and resaved and close it again.  I did this process five times and figured that should be enough to show some degrading if any.   I made the print still at the 18″ X 24″ size and printed.

Listen up people!  It looked identical to the others, couldn’t tell any difference. 

So now you say well it’s an 18″ X 24″ print maybe you’ll see the difference when you go bigger.  So I resized the jpeg and the tiff files to 24″ X 36″  and printed.  Guess what they look the same, NO difference. 

That tiff image eats up four times the hard drive space,  and doesn’t offer me any better quality.

Now if someone says I open and reprocess my image more than five times, why are you having to reprocess an image that many times, I do it once and I’m done, and even if I had to reprocess an image my test shows it’s not a problem at least up to five times. 

I don’t care when someone  says, but what about the statistic or mathematical equations or lets blow it up to 200 percent and look at it, I only care about how the print looks when it comes out of the printer.  That’s how I make my money from the print so I don’t care about all the other BS.

I will say that I have been recently working with the NIK Software programs and they are amazing.  I will post some info on this in the future.  Even with my jpegs the NIk programs have no problem making the adjustments I need.

In closing I will say that I’ have  never had a magizine editor, art consultant, contest judge, gallery owner, art show customer, workshop partisipant, ever tell me my images suffered from the lack of using raw  or tiffs files.

I’ll stay with my jpegs. 

I had an image that won “Highly Honored” in the 2009 Nature’s Best Magazines  Windland Smith Rice International competition.  The mag should be out soon, they just posted press releases and the winners on their blog.   They pick from over twenty thousand images from all over the world.  You can see the winners from the different catagories at www.naturesbestblog.com  Here’s mine that won “Highly Honored”

Macro Boot Camp

Any of you out there into murder mystery novels.  My brother Bob has written a great series of seven books and is working on the eigth right now.  The series is based on a senior citizen sleuth Jim Richardson.  Check out the books at, MurderNovels.com

I would like to thank those that took the time to take the survey for the three-day ”Macro Bootcamp”.  It was good to find out a few things I needed to know to set this event up. 

I’m honored to have Tamron, Lensbaby, Photoflex, and Hunt’s Photo so far as sponsors that will provide macro lenses for the participates to try out, and  door prizes.  With the help of the sponsors I was able to lower the price off this event from $189.00 down to $149.00. 

I have  set a tentative date as March 26,27,28 and will be held at the Embassy Hotel in Livonia Michigan,  (a beautiful hotel just outside Detroit). I’m still contacting companies to sponsor for door prizes. 

It will be a great learning experience, fun and entertaining.   I will have  more details about the workshop and will be taking registrations hopefully by the end of the week. 

This workshop will be limited to forty participates, so don’t wait long when it comes time to register.

Click here for Macro Bootcamp

This morning we had a good frost with the leaves at a perfect stage for group shots.

Check back as the “Three Day Macro Bootcamp” in March is almost ready to announce a date and Sponsors.

To see more frosty group shots go to, www.tinylandscapes.com

Here’s some simple macro tips, read them before you head out into the field to shoot.

Macro Reminders,

Look for subjects that have contrast, colors, textures, light.

Check your camera settings before every shot: ISO, white balance, Jpeg, Raw, etc.

When shooting flowers or any standing subject, check the background before shooting. View from all sides to find the least distracting background.

For a less composed look, place straight lines on diagonal rather than vertical or horizontal through the frame.

Arrange the image so the main subject is in the thirds of the frame rather than the middle.

Make sure the subject you pick to shoot is the one in the best condition. No blotches, missing parts, discolorations, etc.

 For a soft blurred background, set the f/stop in the smaller number range. For the sharpest image throughout set f/stop on the largest number. Try to remember: bigger number, bigger focus – smaller number, smaller focus.

If possible, shoot your subjects in overcast or shady conditions. If subject is in direct sun light use a diffuser to shade the subject, unless you’re using the sun light for special effects like back lighting, or side lighting.

Make a copy of this and carry it in the field.

Macro Boot Camp / Click Here

tinylandscapes.com

I’m looking at offering a in depth three-day Macro Bootcamp.

It would start on Friday evening, seven hours on Saturday and four hours on Sunday.

The class would be for beginners to advanced photographers and cover all aspects of macro.
The workshop would be instructional only covering Lensbaby, stacking images, working all depths of field, Reverse lens, composition, abstracts, equipment, technique.

Please go to my survey to offer your opinion. Click Here

If you watch old westerns, the fastest shooter in town was well-respected, and so is the new Tamron 60mm fast shooting macro lens.  This f/2.0 out shoots the other  macro lenses by a full stop.  This really helps with macro as we tend to shoot subjects like small moving critters, flowers blowing in the wind, and if you’re like me, I shoot a lot in wooded areas were it can get pretty dark.  So to help stop a moving subject or speed up my shutter in low light, the Tamron 60mm macro fits the bill. 

The wide f/2.0 aperture of the this lens also helps to blur backgrounds, which is a problem you usually have with the short focal length lenses.  I had no problem producing a nice blured backgrounds or abstracts, and the results rivaled some of my longer focal legth macro lenses.  This lightweight lens is also great if you’re hand holding shots.

Those of you that know my style of shooting know that I like to shoot a lot of subject using full depth of field. I was very happy with the way this lens performed when stop down all the way. Nice sharp images though out.

Here are a few shots from the Tamron 60mm macro lens.

(Mike Moats is sponsored by Tamron)

www.Tamron.com

Starting in the month of October I will be publishing a short monthly newsletter.  The newsletter will help you improve your macro work with  a monthy macro tip, photography equipment news, and and my updates for workshops, art shows and new products.

Click below and add your name to the email list.Click Here

I was out in the swamps this morning shooting the floating leaves. This was shot after my camera unhitch itself from the head and took a swan drive into the swamp water. My hand shot into the water like out of a canon, so the camera wasn’t submerged more than a fraction of a second. Had no towel to clean it so had to use my t-shirt. It seems to be working fine as this image was shot after the dunking. You can bet I was cranking on the knob that tightens the camera on the head after that.

Lensbaby introduced its new fisheye attachment today.  I had a chance to play with this lens last month and found it very interesting and a creative tool.  I only wish I had more time to spend with it but hopefully this month things slow a little so I’ll paly some more. Check it out at www.lensbaby.com

This top image made it on the lensbaby website (fisheye images) to promote the new lens.

Hunt’s Photo will be having their big annual sale at the end of October. If you have something in particular you’re looking for, e-mail Gary at digitalguygary@wbhunt.com and let him know what you’re looking for and he will call you to let you know how much you can save when the big sale starts. These will be their lowest prices of the year on almost everything photo related.

Hunt’s has recently changed their 800 phone number. You can now contact Gary Farber at 800-924-8682 ext 2332 or by e-mail at digitalguygary@wbhunt.com or Kathryn at knazzaro@wbhunt.com. The old 800 still works, but they have modified the connection system with the new number.

Check them out.

www.huntsphotoandvideo.com

Macro Boot Camp / Click Here