Weeds

Weed, Brookfield, Connecticut © Steven Willard

I’ve never been completely clear just what a weed is, but I guess a simple answer is a plant growing where it isn’t wanted, and has no value. Weeds don’t know that and are seemingly happy to grow wherever they get a chance.

This lovely specimen is growing right outside my door (you might recall that I live in an RV so my front “yard” is a parking lot). You may be wondering why I bothered to photograph a weed. Here’s the thing; I recently picked up, (a euphemism for “bought” that seems to soften the news to someone who doesn’t understand photography), a very inexpensive little ultra-wide zoom for my Olympus cameras. It is the plain jane 9-18mm f4-5.6 that looks more like a toy than a real tool. But it was cheap-really-and would fill my need for a really wide lens, so I bought it, uh, picked it up. It arrived today and this is one of the first images taken with it, you know to see if it works. This will probably be the only test I do of it because it looks pretty good to me. That is my test. Take some pictures, and if they look good to you that should be the end of testing. (Go ahead and click on the image to see it full size.)

So here is my point; there are a lot of photographers out there who wouldn’t give this little lens a second look. It is a weed of a lens that has no place in their bags. They are like the serious gardners who fail to find any beauty or any other redeeming qualities in this little weed that came uninvited to live with me. And yet, given a chance, it they both seem to do the jobs they were designed to do. What more do you want?

Olympus OMD EM5 with Olympus 9-18 zoom, processed in Lightroom and PS CC.