.Jeffrey L.
Oh, Norman!
Triptych of the cow Norman, capturing a quite comical expression.
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I was initially intrigued by Norman because he made eye contact with me when I walked over. I started taking photos of him after about 5 minutes of observation. In our animal, food, and justice class, we always talked about making the animal more concrete and how talk about factory farming always abstracts the animal in a way that prevents action.
Norman is an especially calm and collected cow, but he punctuates this with moments of quite surprising facial expressions. While I was taking photos of Norman, he stayed perfectly still and gazed deeply into my eyes, watching my every move. After about 10 or 15 minutes, I think he decided I wasn’t going to eat him and promptly laid down, munching the grass at his feet. He reminded me of an old grandfather, possessing an unlimited amount of patience. His calmness was infectious. Usually, I get really excited when I’m taking pictures, trying to get the perfect shot in the moment. In this case, I ended up calming myself down quite a bit after realizing that Norman wasn’t going to walk away at a moment’s notice. I guess this is somewhat what people mean when they say that you have to try to “become the animal” when you try to understand them. I think this is also a lesson that I’ll take away for future photographs as well - the idea of how patience can allow you to notice things about the composition and subject matter that you don’t observe at first glance. By noticing those things, you can compose the frame in such a way that can communicates that insight, telling an entirely different story.
Oh, Norman!
Triptych of the cow Norman, capturing a quite comical expression.
__
I was initially intrigued by Norman because he made eye contact with me when I walked over. I started taking photos of him after about 5 minutes of observation. In our animal, food, and justice class, we always talked about making the animal more concrete and how talk about factory farming always abstracts the animal in a way that prevents action.
Norman is an especially calm and collected cow, but he punctuates this with moments of quite surprising facial expressions. While I was taking photos of Norman, he stayed perfectly still and gazed deeply into my eyes, watching my every move. After about 10 or 15 minutes, I think he decided I wasn’t going to eat him and promptly laid down, munching the grass at his feet. He reminded me of an old grandfather, possessing an unlimited amount of patience. His calmness was infectious. Usually, I get really excited when I’m taking pictures, trying to get the perfect shot in the moment. In this case, I ended up calming myself down quite a bit after realizing that Norman wasn’t going to walk away at a moment’s notice. I guess this is somewhat what people mean when they say that you have to try to “become the animal” when you try to understand them. I think this is also a lesson that I’ll take away for future photographs as well - the idea of how patience can allow you to notice things about the composition and subject matter that you don’t observe at first glance. By noticing those things, you can compose the frame in such a way that can communicates that insight, telling an entirely different story.