Flower Photography Now and Then

I took this picture this morning.  Believe it or not, there's no texture or any fancy editing done to the photograph.  I did crop it and brighten it a bit, but all the "special effects" come from shooting with a wide open aperture, catching the right light and being aware of my perspective.  Here's another picture I took at the same time - again no fancy editing,  just cropping and brightening (for this picture, I deliberately cropped down to a section of the picture which was not in focus):

Both have a very dreamy quality that I kindof like.  Both are a big departure for me from my traditional photography.  For example, here are two flower photographs I took last April:

I still love the pictures from last year, but I realize that I know a lot more this year about how to get different effects with my camera.  You can read the full posts about my flower photography here and here to see the kinds of questions I had and what I was learning then. This year, I also know that I could add texture and other post-processing effects to any of these to get a different look (something which I didn't know about last year at all!).  In the long run, I'm much more likely to stick with more traditional photography, but it is fun to see how much I've learned about photography.  I'm sure the same can be said about my mixed media collage and art journal work, and I'm looking forward to doing some "Now and Then" posts about those aspects of my art in the future. 
How do you think your art (photography, mixed media, scrapbooking, cardmaking, etc.) has changed or evolved in the last year?