I was at 44 Farms for their spring sale. It was a 2-day shoot, with presale activities, livestock previews, and a mouth watering dinner for the invited guests on Friday evening, and then the actual sale on Saturday.
Friday morning saw me out at dawn, and being greeted, as I had at least once in the past, with a heavy fog blanketing the farmland near The Little River, which runs through the property near Cameron, Texas.
As I was driving along some of the roads out amongst the fenced pastures, stopping to take some atmospheric shots, I came upon this big fellow. He seemed curious about me as I slowly got out of the car, and held his ground while I got down on a knee and pointed my 70-200mm lens in his direction.
I got off 6 frames before he moved a little, and I decided that what I had captured would have to suffice.
When I started going through the hundreds of images from the 2-day shoot, I decided this one was a keeper. But that it really looked best in black and white. I mean, after all, the sky was white, the animal was black, the land was varying sides of gray. Who needed color? And I also realized that my angle, with his right rear leg obscured by his front one, gave him an appearance of only having three legs! So I affectionately nicknamed him “Tripod.”
Well, Tripod did well by me; the photo won a Gold Medal at The American Advertising Association Houston ADDY Awards, and placed second in the Advertising” category at The International Spider Awards, a world-wide black and white photo competition.
