Look! I'm growing.

In my photography I have had a bit of a crutch up till now, it was my dirty little secret. I rely on my autofocus. *gasp!* Part of it is because my eyesight isn't quite perfect anymore, and part of it was just I didn't trust myself not to use it.

Well, my autofocus lens fell into the hands of a small child, and no longer works. Let's have a moment of silence for it. . . . . . . . . . . .

Ok, so I have this other lens. It's a better lens, I've always known it, but I rarely ever used it because it's a manual focus. Well, I have no choice now but to use it. We went out of town this past weekend, and as part of my Mother's Day gift, the hubby stopped and patiently waited at every good patch of flowers I saw on the way home. He sat in the car more than once entertaining the children while their mother looked like a loon tromping around in the grass by the side of the road.

When I got back and looked through the pictures though, I have to admit I was glad to have been forced to use the better lens. I'll share some of what I got, and I'm even going to go a step further. These photos will be the raw images, totally unedited. All that will have been done is they will be resized. This is another big step on my part. I usually don't let anyone see my work until I have edited them the best I can. I'm a bit of a perfectionist that way. I even freak out if the hubby tries to look at them before I'm ready. So, to me, some of these need some work, but I'm going to go out on a limb and share them like they are.

I'll call this "Texas Wildflowers: Why I love Texas"

*click each to see it bigger*