Dandelion Seeds

Posted by Russ Devan (New Hanover, United States) on 27 June 2008 in Plants & Nature and Portfolio.

I shot this in my dandelion farm (aka, my backyard) one evening while mowing the lawn. I like how the evening sun brightly backlit the dandelion seedheads, so I stopped the lawn tractor and grabbed a few shots before cutting them down. The black background behind the dandelions are my stand of tall spruce trees that I planted as a privacy screen. As much as I liked how the dandelions looked with the backlighting, I like nice cut weeds, er....lawn.

I'm not one to apply weed killer and fertilizer to my lawn since I am on well water and the water table is only 12 feet down. It would be like peeing in my own drinking water if I added chemicals to my lawn as they would eventually leach through the soil and impact the ground water. In addition, a small stream is present directly behind my backyard, so any fertilizer/herbicides could runoff and directly impact the water quality, small fish, and ducks that live back there. Needless to say, I have the least golf course-like lawn on my street (notice that I didn't say worst lawn since I don't think it's bad to begin with). The guys at Scotts and Chemlawn probably hate me. Tough shit.

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” - Henry David Thoreau


All images and text are copyrighted by Russell D. Devan. All rights reserved. The download, duplication, printing or copying of these images in any manner without the expressed written authorization of the photographer is strictly prohibited. Please contact me if you would like to use this image in any way. Please visit my portfolio at http://www.pbase.com/rddevan.

NIKON D200
2/1000 second
F/8.0
ISO 100
300 mm

flowers