Any gardener can tell you that weeds are resilient. In fact, you probably could find a gardener or two who say weeds are downright merciless.
But would you ever imagine a weed could be triumphant—even majestic? You’d have to see it to believe it. While it might have happened by accident, Wayzata resident Nancy Cohodes has shown the beautiful side of weeds; we’re not so sure we need the weed-whacker anymore.
This photo, We Need Weeds, won first place in the Wildlife & Nature category of our 2015 Lens on Lake Minnetonka photo contest, and was taken behind the Marsh wellness center last July.
“The result was a surprise,” Cohodes says. She explains that she took this picture using the manual mode on her Canon EOS Rebel SL1 camera, even before she fully understood how to manipulate the settings. She says she shot from a good vantage point, but “I didn’t know that the colors would turn out like that.”
Her eye was initially drawn to the single dandelion, even in its final stage of life, in full glory. “I like the way [the dandelion seeds] kind of blend into the sky,” she says. “It just seems like it’s an expansive amount of sky.”
Her advice to novice photographers is to get out there and shoot. “Don’t overthink anything. Go out and have fun. Trust your instinct,” she advises. "That’s kind of my philosophy on life. Have confidence and do it. I’ve been on wrong settings, and big deal! Just keep trying until something works.
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This photo was one of our winners in the 2015 Lens on Lake Minnetonka photo contest. Check lakeminnetonkamag.com later this summer for more informationabout submitting your photos to the 2016 contest!
