Wildflower Hunting.

I recently decided to enter a photography contest created by my local state park. The contest is to photograph native Michigan wildflowers, with a limit of two entries. The top three prizes are gift certificates to a local camera shop. I figured how hard could it be to take pictures of a few flowers? Right? Much harder than you would think actually. This time last year I believe I was wearing shorts and flip-flops, but this year I'm wearing jeans, tennis shoes and a combination of sweatshirts and jackets to combat the 40 degree weather. I actually had to drive to work in the snow last week. I just feel like this April is much colder than last year, and needless to say not much is growing, especially wildflowers.

I have known about the contest for almost a month now and I've just had to bide my time waiting for flower-growing weather. It finally got warm enough two weekends ago for things to think about starting to grow, and then it quickly got back down to freezing temperatures when Mother Nature said "Haha! Fooled you." Last weekend I went out to look for flowers, found absolutely nothing. Then during the week it was all rain, cooler or just nasty, not good for photography, weather. With the deadline drawing close I headed back out today with my dad to look for some flowers. By some miracle we managed to find two patches of flowers. The first was some measly group of about six small blue and white flowers. Honestly I am not even sure if they are wildflowers, but they were flowers. Then I also managed to spot a patch of small purple flowers, which I think are called common blue violets. I snapped a bunch of photos and now I need to pick two for my entries in case I can't get out to find more wildflowers.

First I'll show the little blue and white flower. Please let me know if this is a real wildflower and what the name is! I will post my top two picks of this flower first, then some more shots I have. I will only post the cropped versions, but the uncropped ones are on flickr if you would like to look at them all. I will also number them, feel free to comment and list your top two favorites.

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Next I will post the images of the common blue violet flower. Again I will post my top two picks first followed by all the cropped versions of the rest of my images.

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Link to all of my wildflower photos: Wildflowers!

Comment and pick favorites to help me make my decision. Also help me figure out what the first flower is. I need the names of the flower when I turn in my entries.

Now enjoy three and half hours of awesomeness: