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It took some 10 minutes before this herd was a little used to my ugly head, but after that they kept on doing what they did before.
Canon 70D with 55-250 ...
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It took some 10 minutes before this herd was a little used to my ugly head, but after that they kept on doing what they did before.
Canon 70D with 55-250 IS STM at 250mm, f-5.6, 1-250sec, ISO-400, -1-3 stop, late in the afternoon.
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Awards

Zenith Award
Top Shot Award 21
Winner in Livestock Photo Challenge
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3 Comments | Report
JDLifeshots
 
JDLifeshots June 15, 2017
Great shot! Worth the wait.
kennyhimes PRO+
 
kennyhimes August 15, 2020
Congrats on your award! Awesome capture!
margaretgodfrey PRO
 
margaretgodfrey August 16, 2020
lovely shot, congrats on winning challenge :)
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Behind The Lens

Location

In the south of Portugal, at a luxury resort with lots of farmland for sale where we did a housesit to keep it occupied and maintained.

Time

Later in the afternoon.

Lighting

The sun was ready to sink behind the mountains, so I never could take photos within the golden hour over there, but I have some pictures and video footage from this same day in which those cows light up like brown gold. But here I just had some clouds, so more even light. Of course I had to capture this when it happened, so no time to wait for a little sun.

Equipment

Canon 70D with the 55-250 kit lens, hand shot. No flash.

Inspiration

The owner of the resort had an agreement with a farmer that he could let his cows graze on her 400 hectare property if he regularly plowed some grounds. And the cows kept the grass short, of course. So we often saw this herd pass through the little valley with a meandering creek in front of the main house where we lived. The cows were afraid of me in the beginning, but because I regularly tried to carefully and slowly approach the herd, and acted if I also was eating grass, they got used to me and let me come closer and closer. Sometimes I just found a place to lie in the grass when I saw them approaching, as if it was the most normal thing in the world for a human to do some sky staring in the afternoon. And they started to do "relaxed" things like you see in the picture, and even the huge bull let me come close. Cows are just such relaxing animals to be around, even if you don't have a camera with you. Or probably even more when you don't have a camera with you, haha!

Editing

Well, the normal things, like a little contrast to get them more to the foreground. Luckily I made this picture with my telelens, so although it doesn't have a big aperture, it still has a nice bokeh background. And then a little sharpening, but just a little, to keep the picture "loving-mom-with-child-ish". I didn't do much with the colors, because I wanted to keep them realistic.

In my camera bag

My main set-up is my Canon 70D with a Canon 10-16mm lens with circular ND-filter, and with a Rode Stereo Pro mic, because I do a lot of vlogging. But for photos I also use my 55-250 a lot, sometimes with 32-21-12mm macro rings for insect- and flower or whatever macro photography. Then I have my 50mm f1.8 for some detail pics or video footage, but I would like to use that one more often. For macro I also use my Yongnuo 685 flash with wireless trigger. I have a cheap but okay tripod and a Gorilla thingy that I mainly use for filming the refit work of our boat, because I need both hands for other things. For lightning some scenes I also use a cheapo 12V LED-light from a hardware store, and two outdoor head lamps.

Feedback

Read about your subject an get familiar with it. Be interested in your subject. And have patience, because when those animals are at ease with you around, their behavior is way more natural, and you can come way closer.

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