Maybe not as exotic as a cheetah on the Serengeti, but I still think cows make good pics.   Maybe because they are such an iconic example of American life….I mean the word COWboy is synonymous with American life and attitude.   Western fine art is ripe with examples of early American life on the range herding cattle.  Funny then, that I actually took this picture in New Zealand.  On vacation with my wife and friends, we pulled over to admire a little creek by roadside.  There was this cow and I loved the way the white and black came off the stark green that is everywhere in New Zealand.  I first tried to get the cow and the creek with flowers and frame it up traditionally, but the pics came back boring.  Then I thought about what I really liked, which was the colors, and decided to try to abstract it.   In photography it is very easy to get carried away with trying to include everything in the composition of the image.  “…get the stream, mountains, big sky, flowers, and oh don’t miss that bear over there…”  It pays to try to simplify the elements sometimes and focus on just one part of the scene.  I included only half the cows head because I wanted to grab the attention of the viewer by having them ask, “…why did he only include half the cows face?”  I fancy that is it similar to the importance of the opening line in a novel that grabs you and pulls you in…”it was a dark and stormy night.”  I can tell you that honestly, none of this went through my mind at the time.  I just pointed and shot till I found something that was appealing to me.  But, once you have the time to sit and consider why it was appealing to myself, and perhaps others, you gain experience that shows up in subsequent images and your craft gets better.   Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes – Oscar Wilde