Wildflowers at the end of the year

On December 29th I went over to the strip of land between Arboretum Drive and the Capital of Texas Highway to photograph some Mexican hats (Ratibida columnifera) that I figured would be there. And they were there. The sky was heavily overcast and the breeze didn’t stop blowing, but you do what you can with what you get. I set a shutter speed of 1/640 to contend with the wind, which actually blew some of the ray flowers into uncharacteristic positions that allowed for novel portraits. Because the light was low I used flash; that sometimes left the clouds looking unnaturally dark, which created the extra drama you see above. As time passed the sky remained overcast but turned lighter shades of gray, as shown in the picture below of a different Mexican hat flower head about half an hour after the first one.

Adjacent to the Mexican hats, most of the goldeneye bushes (Viguiera dentata)
had gone to seed but a few were also still pushing out new flowers:

And so this fatal year has reached its final day.
Are better times to come? It’s “yes” we hope to say.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman