Flower patterns

After a couple of years shooting almost exclusively in Aperture Priority mode, I moved to Manual. And believe me- I had a real reason. I am using 99% of the time my Nikkor 18-200 mm lens, and recently I discovered, that regardless the metering mode, it is overexposing pictures. It is driving me mad. Although my husband argues with me, that the pictures both look good on the screen and their histogram looks right, they are too bright to me. And it is not happening with my Nikkor fisheye, so looks it is just this lens. Instead of Googling what the problem is (I constantly forget to do that) I switched to Manual and learn new skills. It is like driving a stick shift car, which I am also figuring out after spending last 10 years with automatic . If you know the rules, signs and all that stuff, it adds only one additional element. Not easy, but not horribly complicated either. Both with car and with camera, I have moments I forget to check, though :).
Anyway, I was photographing my mom’s rock garden this weekend, and here is one of my favorite images. It is a little Lensbaby soft, but I still love the leaves/petals pattern and matching colors.