Sometimes all you need is Nature’s beauty: Amended

I came home from work early today, as it’s ‘poets day’ in the UK :-)

I wasn’t looking to do any photography, but as I turned into our drive way, my eyes where drawn to this enormous seed head.

It was perfect, with every seed attached; but it was obviously threaten by the wind; so I decided to capture it as one of the last records of our New Mexico life. After some three years at 7,000 feet we return to the UK and sea level, for good, in a few weeks time.

As I’m packing my camera gear this weekend, this was going to be one of the last images taken in the US.

I don’t know what specific weed I was photographing: I assume it is one of the Taraxacum, or dandelion, family. BTW the name dandelion's is derived from the French dent de lion, a reference to the irregular and jagged margins of the lance-shaped leaves.

To me I simply saw its beautiful symmetry and texture.

Although not shot with a macro lens, and not a macro image, ie 1-to-1 or greater capture; because the viewer is not aware of the scale, ie the seed head is some 5 inches in diameter, many would consider it a macro-class image.

For those that are interested I used my 5D3 in Dual-ISO mode (100/800) and my ring flash. The exposure was 1/160s at F/18, and I used my trusty 24-105mm F/4L lens at 60mm.

All post processing was done in Ligthroom (BTW I used the new LR CC (2015), which has a new dehaze feature that is worth checking out).

I hope, like me, you ignore the 'fact' it is a weed, and enjoy this beauty of Nature.

I was so intrigued by this seed head that I took a second image of it today: before its beauty simply falls away.