"A weed is but an unloved flower."

-Title quote by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

I was recently invited by Roxana of Illuminated Perfume to participate in a blogging event called "May Flowers". (You can see the image + link in the sidebar of my blog also!)

Or click here to see the posts already this month;
http://journal.illuminatedperfume.com/2010/04/may-flowers.html

And today is my day, so here goes :)

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I know that the event is called "May Flowers", but it occurred to me that the "flowers" I usually end up photographing are not really flowers at all. A lot of them are little weeds!

I'm not really sure why I am so drawn to these weeds... but a lot of them are surprisingly pretty. The ones I really like are the teeny tiny ones. I shoot them in macro and (try to) capture interesting angles.

This is kind of my philosophy on photography (and art in general, really). Anybody can take a photo of something "pretty", but I think it's much more interesting to take something conventionally thought as "ugly" and make it seem beautiful.

I always end up photographing the things that other people would probably just pass by, never giving a second glance. It's funny when I go out to take photos, people always say, "What are you taking pictures of?" I probably look like an idiot kneeling down on the ground a few inches away from some weedy thing. But I just smile and say, Oh, I take pictures of everything!

It's also very satisfying when I show the photos to others and they ask what it is. When I reply that it is a tiny weed they are pretty surprised ;)

This is also actually probably my philosophy on life. People always pass by the little things and never notice them. (People also pass by other people and never notice them.) I don't know, (and this is a stretch) but it could be like I am liberating these weeds, and I always kind of felt unnoticed, so I'm just helping them out. Sharing the love :)

And as I was convo-ing Roxana on Etsy and telling her about my fascination with weeds, she shared with me this quote --

"What is a weed? I have heard it said that there are sixty definitions. For me, a weed is a plant out of place." -Donald Culross Peattie

So a thank you to Roxana, because that inspired me to search for more "weed quotes". The one I used for the title of this post was my favorite I found, here are some more I discovered while searching --

"Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them." - A.A. Milne (author, of course, of Winnie-the-Pooh)

"What we call is a weed is in fact merely a plant growing where we do not want it." -E.J. Salisbury

"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Now, some of my photographs of said "weeds";

And one last quote, which is especially thought-provoking;

"Man is the only critter who feels the need to label things as flowers or weeds." -Unknown

♥ kelsey.

(P.S. I have a bunch more photos I took recently, of little blossoms, bushes, leaves, etc, which I will share later! This post was focused on the forgotten weeds.)