As a photographer, I always look for “iconic” photographs representing a symbol worth tribute or veneration.

I often miss these photos until I look at them on my wide computer screen. I can’t see them through a lens; I have to be able to sit back and get a broader perspective.

I can’t count how many iconic photos I miss.

One of the iconic photos I love to take is Maria taking the hay out to the animals just after dawn and just before dusk. There is something symbolic about it; I always think I’ve taken that photo before, but when I look at them, I see each one is different.

The pictures capture the changes in our lives. Maria wouldn’t have been in that photo six or seven years ago; she was determined to focus on her art, not the farm. That evolved, not I focus on my writing and the farm, and she focuses on her art and the farm.

She feeds the animals and runs that part of the farm that used to be my primary chore.

Her artwork has taken off, and so has my blog work. Yet we incorporate the farm into our work, lives, and daily art.

That’s the big story; Our work is separate, and our lives come together and fuse around the farm and the animals. I rarely feed them now. Her love of bringing hay out to her beloved friends is a central element of her life and the farm’s life, something I am always trying to capture in images.

Those are iconic images, worth tribute and veneration. I sometimes forget that.

When we got home from Urgent Care today, Maria went out immediately to feed the animals, and we were an hour or so late from the usual time.

The donkeys are pretty precise about being fed; they get irritated when we are late.

Maria grabs hay and takes it to the pasture; the animals crowd around her and eat, calming down. She counts them all and talks to each one.

She is a soothing sound and reality for them, a fixed point in a powerless life.