Hollins' problem is with the Auto Focus; by taking a close up shot like that of the snowdrops, the camera will always assume that you only want the object nearest the camera in focus and its generally considered more aesthetically pleasing to leave the rest of the shot slightly out of focus ('bokeh' is the term given to the out of focus area). A cheat to get the whole shot in focus is to shoot the photo from further away to get the whole shot in focus and just crop put the unwanted bit in an editing program.
As regards Auto settings; for outdoor, daytime photography, the camera software is far better at selecting the correct settings, there's no need to select it manually. In addition, if you have a camera that can shoot in RAW format, then you can pretty much guarantee an image that can be edited successfully to produce a good end result. Pretty much all my recent photos were shot on the little Sony RX100 camera in the RAW format, using Auto settings, and then edited in Lightroom:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/davellandudno/
