'Just had to be different,' Texas, June 2013

Just had to be different, originally uploaded by DC Products.

It's been a while. I had kind of lost my mojo when it comes to posting photos -- and then even to taking photos. I rarely took my camera out anymore, unless I was shooting a minor league baseball game. The seven-year-old Konica Minolta had some issues, and the photos needed quite a bit of work before they were good enough for posting.

But then, my 300mm zoom lens wouldn't focus anymore. The autofocus seemed broken, and then the manual focus wouldn't go past a certain point. It was time -- so a few weeks ago, I upgraded to a Canon 60D, literally a day before leaving on a short vacation to Austin, Texas.

And just like that, I fell in love again with photography and started carrying my camera with me just about everywhere -- like on short car trips or to work. I took half an hour one afternoon to drive to the Great Falls in Paterson, N.J., because I'd read that they were flowing at high capacity after so much rain. I'm having fun again.

And so it's time to get back into some of the weekly challenges I used to enjoy. For this one -- flowers in the field -- I'm using one of those Austin shots. But soon I hope to use the challenges as inspiration to go out and find something to fit the theme.

To new adventures ...