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Description
In the part of the world I live in - the western Canadian prairies - there is one plant / flower / weed that makes its annual appearance upon countless grasses and fields and rural/urban lawns.

The dreaded dandelion!

This weed is so utterly despised by pretty much everyone as they can explode out from the ground every spring at a lightning speed and quickly rear their dreaded ugly yellow flowered head.

Everyone knows that if they dont mow down, pluck out, or spray this weed fast enough (i.e. a couple days), the dreaded dandelion will transform this yellow flower into a white puffy ball of seeds which the first breeze will whisk away to spread the weed's spawn to 100's of new locations to start a new life.

AND YET, as much as I and most other despise this weed and quickly label it such an ugly "WEED", is it really that ugly?

Today, while on my belly on my front yard taking photos of some truly beautiful flowers that just bloomed, I looked over to my side and saw one of these last remaining evil dandelions with its white fluffy head of seeds standing alone on my lawn. With my camera in my hand, I decided to take a few close up photos of this last standing evil weed.

I set my aperture to the lower depth of field to force all the fore and backgrounds to completely blur. Although I had enough daylight, I engaged my flash to brighten up the white fluffy seeds. And then I took photos of this dandelion with my camera pressed to the ground looking up at its head.

In my viewfinder I was amazed at how beautiful this "UGLY" weed was when zoomed in on it as a lone subject. I brought the photo into photoshop where I cropped it and only performed some BASIC adjustments (changed the brightness and contrast to darken out the background).

I have to admit that as much as I dread this weed's appearance on my lawn, it actually is not an "ugly" flower - just hated to the point that its considered ugly.

I hope you all enjoy this photo.

Description
In the part of the world I live in - the western Canadian prairies - there is one plant / flower / weed that makes its annual appearance upon countless grasses and fields and rural/urban lawns.

The dreaded dandelion!

This weed is so utterly despised by pretty much everyone as they can explode out from the ground every spring at a lightning speed and quickly rear their dreaded ugly yellow flowered head.

Everyone knows that if they dont mow down, pluck out, or spray this weed fast enough (i.e. a couple days), the dreaded dandelion will transform this yellow flower into a white puffy ball of seeds which the first breeze will whisk away to spread the weed's spawn to 100's of new locations to start a new life.

AND YET, as much as I and most other despise this weed and quickly label it such an ugly "WEED", is it really that ugly?

Today, while on my belly on my front yard taking photos of some truly beautiful flowers that just bloomed, I looked over to my side and saw one of these last remaining evil dandelions with its white fluffy head of seeds standing alone on my lawn. With my camera in my hand, I decided to take a few close up photos of this last standing evil weed.

I set my aperture to the lower depth of field to force all the fore and backgrounds to completely blur. Although I had enough daylight, I engaged my flash to brighten up the white fluffy seeds. And then I took photos of this dandelion with my camera pressed to the ground looking up at its head.

In my viewfinder I was amazed at how beautiful this "UGLY" weed was when zoomed in on it as a lone subject. I brought the photo into photoshop where I cropped it and only performed some BASIC adjustments (changed the brightness and contrast to darken out the background).

I have to admit that as much as I dread this weed's appearance on my lawn, it actually is not an "ugly" flower - just hated to the point that its considered ugly.

I hope you all enjoy this photo.