I consider myself a very fortunate photographer. There are amazing things to be seen all around the place where I live, and my neighbors don’t seem to mind me wandering around with my camera, taking pictures of their barns and pastures--everyday scenes that strike me as beautiful.
For instance...there are a b’zillion buttercups blooming around here now. Maybe the flowers are the happy result of the unusually cool and wet spring we’ve had, because I don’t remember seeing this many buttercups in years past. There are literally waves of flowers in one of the pastures over at the place where my neighbor, Gene, lives. Two horses graze on his land, and I mentioned to Gene that it'd probably make a nice photograph when the horses made their way into that pasture that's crazy-yellow with flowers. Several days later Gene actually called me on the phone to let me know he was about to open the gate to allow the horses onto that buttercup-filled ground.
Like I said, my neighbors seem supportive of my photographic habit. I hadn't asked Gene to call me, but it was a neighborly gesture that he did.
The four-leggeds are the very picture of peace and contentment as they graze, nap, and laze in a landscape splashed with over-the-top applications of color. Mother Nature could be accused of going a little overboard in her use of neon yellow from her artist’s color palate. She seems to be treating my neighborhood like it’s her own personal canvas, which I guess it is.
As near as I can tell, the horses are pretty accepting of their roles as models in this living, exuberant art installation.
Sometimes photographs are spur-of-the-moment surprises when they make their way into my life. Other times I sense the possibility of a picture, something I think might happen given the right circumstances, and I wait patiently--sometimes for days or longer--to see whether an image will materialize.
This week, making nice pictures was easy. All I had to do was pick up the phone when my neighbor called.
