This is a day lily in our backyard. They only bloom properly for a single day, according to Marian, so I hustled out on D-Day and got this picture.

In reality, this flower is pure yellow, but I dehazed it to get the deep orange in the middle. Dehazing has gotten something of a bad rap for being overused, but that’s mainly because too many people use it to actually dehaze hazy photos. Generally speaking, if you have fog or haze in a landscape, you should leave it there. It’s part of the scenery, and trying to remove it doesn’t improve things. However, I occasionally find it useful in modest quantities for pictures where the lighting is just a little too drab. This very much includes portraits of people taken indoors in very flat lighting. Today’s picture is sort of the flower equivalent of that, except that I felt free to use more than the usual level of dehazing because it’s just a flower and I didn’t care about hurting its feelings.

July 14, 2018 â€” Irvine, California

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A full one-third of our annual fundraising comes in this month alone. That’s risky, because a strong December means our newsroom is on the beat and reporting at full strength—but a weak one means budget cuts and hard choices ahead.

With just 4 days left, we need a huge surge in reader support to get to our $400,000 year-end goal. Whether you've given before or this is your first time, your contribution right now matters. All gifts are 3X matched and tax-deductible.

Managing an independent, nonprofit newsroom is staggeringly hard. There’s no cushion in our budget—no backup revenue, no corporate safety net. We can’t afford to fall short, and we can’t rely on corporations or deep-pocketed interests to fund the fierce, investigative journalism Mother Jones exists to do. That’s why we need you right now. Please chip in to help close the gap.

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