The curious cow

A shot of a curious cow in the meadows

This picture was shot -just as the photo from the previous blog– near where I live in Holland back in 2011 on the same trip where I also took this photograph that was discussed in an earlier blog. Right in front of my apartment, there is this big meadow over which on some days a beautiful inversion layer is draped.
When I was making a nice time-lapse, I wandered a little bit around. Suddenly these cows appeared from the mist and were curious what this human was doing I think 🙂 As soon as I was ready with my time-lapse, I took this separate photo (again with the camera of my girlfriend (now fiancee)).

The reason why I took the shot like this was because a friend of mine has a painting of a cow in the same pose. That painting intrigued me and -although I never would buy such a painting- I was triggered to pursue making a photograph like that painting. Cows have a natural tendency to be curious and I decided to make use of that and consequently hold the camera near her nose and hoped for the best 🙂 The surroundings with those colors (the green, white and blue) finished the perfect setting for the picture. With hindsight it is a pity that the other cow is also in the shot.

Making such a shot works best when the nose is as much as possible in focus, but the eyes should also still be in focus. I chose therefore an Fnumber of 6.3 at a focallength of 18 mm. Back in 2011 I was still figuring out all the settings on the camera and had it on landscape mode. With an ISO set at 100, the camera chose an exposure of 1/100th of a second. In post I did not do much. The picture was in my eyes already great. I did not remove the other cow, because I did not want to manipulate the photo; This was the situation, alais.
The picture was made on the spot, without any fancy settings, any gear nor any post production. That made this shot a great impulsive photo!

Camera settings:

Location