Photo-A-Day #1565

Things are looking much brighter today than yesterday despite the gloomy weather outside. Today when I picked up Eva from my Aunt Corrine’s house I saw that the cows were out in the pasture across the street. I’ve tried and tried to catch these cows ever since I totally missed a fantastic opportunity about a year ago when I drove by and saw the cows out in the snow. Their breath making steam as they chewed up whatever shoots they could find, some had the lightly fallen snow on their heads and noses and the scene was idyllic. I’ve come across many scenes like this when I am without my camera.

There was another time where I was driving to work and I looked over at a small island and saw a small deer on the tip of the island bending to take a drink, it was early in the morning and the mist was everywhere. I was on the opposite side of the road on a highway with no way to get back to take the show. So I used a little trick that I learned from Ben Barnhart, who talked at work. As he was growing up he didn’t always have money for film so his father told him to take a mental picture. But his father wasn’t just telling him something to shut him up about lack of film, he meant take a real mental picture. Look at the scene, frame it in your mind and capture that one perfect shot. The photographer said that because of that practice of taking mental pictures his physical photography improved. I’ve tried to do that at times when I’ve had a camera and not had a camera. Just stop frame a shot and snap it there in my mind. I can still see those cows in the field and that deer on that island.