The Heart of Texas Professional Photographers Guild holds monthly image competitions. The members submit any image they choose in either the Professional or Associate Category.  There is also a monthly “Challenge” competition where members create an image with a specified theme or technique.  In February, the theme was a “Domestic Animal.” I decided to try an do something with cattle in a field.

I took an afternoon and drove out Highway 6.  My plan was to photograph some cattle and try and get something interesting.  I came upon a field in which a rather substantial steer  was standing on the rim of a tank. I started taking pictures of it.  As things progressed I started thinking more and more about the idea of isolating that one steer in the frame.  I decided converting it to Black and White would add a little more emphasis to it, but that left a rather large area of sky to the left. I decided I could reduce that by cropping the scene into more of a panorama. That helped somewhat, but that sky was still too distracting.  So, as I considered it, I began to think about cattle and the old Chisholm Trail and the Waco suspension bridge. That made me decide to add an image of the cowboy statue at the suspension bridge.  So, the final image is