Ted Emerson, the dean of local brush hoggers, came to the farm today with his tough blue tractor. Ted comes every year to brush hog the pastures  to knock down the weeds and brush and help the good grass breathe and grow. Every year I tell him to stay away from the marshy part of the pasture, and almost every year, he ignores me and gets stuck.

(He got stuck this afternoon, he’ll be here in the morning to pull his tractor out. I think it’s a point of pride with him. His son or a friend always comes to pull him out.)

Ted is one of those good people who never charge enough for what they do,  you have to pay him more than he asks, like a shearer. His tractor is as tough as he is, the giant rotary blades are dull and can handle low stumps and thick roots and twigs.

Photography can be casual, or it can be an art  with many challenges. One of the ideas I have is that a good photographer can take a good photo of anything if he or she thinks about it. I love to watch Ted brush hog and I always think many tractor photos on farms are cliches, so common as to be hardly noticeable.

Could I take a photo of Ted brush hogging today that was different, that might have some beauty to it? I looked up at the sky, it was a good sky for IR, and I know the camera sometimes picks up blue. The sun was in the right place, I knew the blue would come out dark, the pasture and woods light, even white.

So I think I caught the art of brush hogging a bit, a kind of ballet and art form all of its own. I’m learning when to use my IR camera and when not to use it. I took a step forward today