Subtitle: California cows are happy cows.
Back in April, I wrote a post titled “The gate is locked – the beauty and bleakness of California’s Central Valley- a new project”. I was excited to share the image of a locked, flooded gate without any fences around. I had spent a good part of the winter photographing the Rush Ranch in Fairfield, CA, and I thought I had a great deal of interesting pictures to warrant a project.
Fast forward to now, after much consideration and test prints, only a few photographs have passed the test of my own critique. Despite that, I feel that there is some progress: I was struggling between presenting the photos as 2X3 or 4X5, and have decided to go with the 2X3. From now on, I don’t have to think about it anymore.
Photographing the landscape of the Central Valley is not easy, since there is little in the way of redeeming beauty and anchor points. By anchor points I mean, subjects of some interest to “rest the eye on” and give it a scale. Like the gate in the “The Gate is Locked“, or the cows in the FEATURED PHOTOGRAPH (F/18, 1/150s, ISO 400 at 70mm). I like this photo because the cow looks so tiny against the vast landscape and sky above. There isn’t much more to the central valley than rolling hills, vast pastures, an oak tree here and there and, once in a great while, something happens in the sky.
Click on the photo below to expand.

If you are not from California, you may not have heard that “California Cows are Happy Cows“. If you are interested to learn more about happy cows, click on this link for a video 😉
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