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In and Out of the Fog

Yeah, I know. More cows. But I’ve always loved cows. Not only do they symbolize a kind of universal motherhood, but cows are also animals that radiate timeless serenity.

After an intense period of work and emotional turmoil, more than ever, I need serenity in my life right now.

I shot this about a week ago when a thick, coastal fog rolled in and settled over Vejbystrand for much of the morning.

I went for a long walk along the meadow with a camera at my side, hoping to capture something uniquely foggy.

The cows instinctively huddled together in an effort to feel safer. Even if it was completely windless and soundless on the meadow, the dense fog visually impaired the herd’s ability to see where potential threats would be coming from. They didn’t seem particularly nervous, but I did get a sense of heightened awareness as I passed them. While my trajectory was clearly unthreatening, most of the cows followed my every step, making sure I wasn’t going to leave my chosen path.

Time for some preaching.

It’s been five years since I stopped eating meat and poultry on the advice of our wise daughter Elle, who started the family’s boycott. This for three reasons:

1. Ethically
Most animals raised for consumption are bred and treated in a horrific and completely unacceptable way. Millions of animals suffer for most of their short lives just so people can eat cheap, often unhealthy amounts of meat and chicken.

2. Climate

It’s utterly unreasonable to clear gigantic areas of primeval forest in the Amazon and elsewhere in the world just in order to acquire land to grow soy and corn on as feed for the animals. If we instead grew vegetables directly for our own consumption, we’d both save the earth’s resources and eat healthier!

In a few years, we will be 8 billion people on this blue planet. Since we know that climate change is already causing devastating problems today, it’s easy to see that we have enormous challenges ahead of us when additional billions of people in developing countries start demanding the same unsound habits we in the industrial world have had for decades. A simple approach (but of course not a solitary solution alone) is, for example, to stop eating meat and poultry.

3. Health

Even though we in Sweden eat slightly less meat today than before, it’s still far more than what many researchers consider to be healthy. Eating meat and poultry, in whole or processed form, undoubtedly increases the risk of getting cancer.

So if you don’t give a hoot about how the animals you eat experience their lives and how the earth feels from raising them, maybe you can start thinking about how your body feels before you eat the next slice of ham, grilled chicken, or steak.


Cows in Vejbystrand

I have more than enough photos of cows munching grass and simply calling out to them on the meadow hasn’t helped grab their attention at all. So, I devised a slightly different strategy, realizing that I had to befriend them somehow. Cows might not be the animal kingdom’s smartest mammal, but they surely know that I don’t belong to their tribe.

A month or so ago, I came up with an idea. I played a string of sound effects of cows mooing and calling out through my iPhone’s tiny speakers. Low and behold, the whole crew would not only look up from their grass munching, but a few of the boldest ones would also walk towards me, possibly thinking that in fact, I was one of them after all – just a little different. My strategy is the same as what some birdies do when they use a whistle or hunters when they employ horny moose calls. And with a few slices of apple with me, I literally have the cows in Vejbystrand eating out of my hand.


How Now Brown Cow

Shot this yesterday on the meadow here in Vejbystrand. I must admit, I’ve been having a hard time getting this year’s cow collective’s attention. So I came up with a plan. I googled “cow sounds”, clicked my way to a Youtube video that promised a bunch of farm sounds, including cows, pigs and I think sheep, and then cranked up my iPhone’s volume as loud as it would go (11) and zimzalabim, I got the attention of at least one of these beautiful creatures. At least for a few seconds. Like most people today, the attention span of cows seems also to be getting shorter and shorter.


No Number Cows

I always remove the bright, yellow number tags from the ears of cows, sheep, and goats that I photograph. The tags are not only ugly, but they also remind me of how much easier it must be for their keepers to not have to think of them as living creatures – which in turn I associate with the mindset the Nazis had when they tattooed numbers on prisoners in the labor and death camps. Why not insert a discreet RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip somewhere on the cows/sheep/goats instead?


Above and Beyond Vejbystrand

Much of drone flying, at least technically, resides in my muscle memory. I don’t actively think about what controls do what. I just decide on a manoeuver and my fingers instantly execute the thought. Though perhaps unremarkable because it’s so obvious and natural, I still find it interesting how easily and nimbly we humans interface with machines. How adaptable we are and how fast we take things for granted.

Anyhow… I shot this over Vejbystrand last night at about 9 pm. In the center of the photo, you should be able to see a herd of tiny cows.


Birds of Vejbystrand

So this morning I woke up at an ungodly hour to pee. After struggling out of bed (my back is out of whack), I realized that it wasn’t my bladder that woke me. It was the cacophony of chirping birds in the garden and adjacent meadow. There was no wind whatsoever. I put on my shoes, strolled over to the studio, found my Zoom H6 recorder and dialed in the highest possible fidelity settings (96kHz/24bit), and began recording with the x/y capsule multidirectional microphones. I know nothing about birds, but have a decent collection of them here – including the one above. This is only a minute of a 3-hour long recording. For a hour’s immersive experience (with some distant cows to boot), feel free to click right here.