Wildflower Afternoon

While carrying some limbs I had pruned from our shrubs back to the woods I spotted some blue eyed grass in the back field. It is one of my favorite wildflowers. When I was a little boy (a VERY long time ago) I used to pick handfuls of them for my mother. For those not familiar with them, they are a small flower, no more than 3/8s of an inch across, on a flat stem and they often grow in clumps (see below). It was a bit breezy so I had a hard time getting sharp photos. The flowers kept bobbing out of the frame, moving just as I tripped the shutter and blurring the image. I shot a whole series of one flower with a bee on it but the wind blurred every frame. I posted this one to Google+ where someone has decided that by default every uploaded photo should get "enhanced" by their software before it appears on their page. It made this image brighter than I wanted and added sharpening so that it was over-sharpened. I searched through the settings page and turned off that feature for future uploads but I can't fathom why Google thought their software could automatically make better aesthetic decisions than I can. That should have been an 'opt-in' feature, not an 'opt-out' one. Flickr has made some changes to their site too but at least they don't try to "auto-improve" your images.

Some other flowers from the back field: Sheep Sorrel

Hoary Alyssum

And a Common Pussytoes gone to seed.