British Bluebell.

 Today seemed to be an ideal day for having some pictures framed, a task that we’ve been meaning to do for some years time, including a (previously Blipped) picture of Littlenose by John Grant which appeared on a children’s television programme thirty  years ago. The framer was one of my beekeeping protégés a few years back so we had to digress into the states of our respective bees before progressing to business. He is now talking of taking early retirement which causes two thoughts to run around my head in deep conflict: he’s a very good craftsman so we’d better have all of our pictures sorted soon and, if he can afford to take early retirement, he must be overcharging us.
 
We left him and went for lunch at the Mining Museum which, despite our specific request, was accompanied by tepid coffee. Times are getting desperately hard; there are now more coffee houses than ever before but fewer that can provide a respectable beverage. Even the franchises that used to be reliably good have now degraded to indifferent.
 
This week’s photography course challenge is to admit to having to make compromises when things are not perfect; I’m quite good at that. I wanted a Blip of wild garlic but, having gone to the wrong place, had to make do with a British bluebell – it's the same as the Spanish variety, only not quite as butch. I tried my maximum aperture to throw the background out of focus, it was a bit too wide to retain focus on the flower – but nowhere near wide enough to throw the BG out – I had to fudge it. The end result looks rather like a painting, which surprised me; I’ve been playing about with the newly free Nik software, it requires a rather curious way of working but could be coaxed into producing some good results in the right hands.
 
Once again, credit goes to BikerBear for hosting FlowerFriday; that lady does sterling work on behalf of Blip.