The Cattleman Can

I recently spent some time with 95-year-old Cliff Ward. He has lived quite a life and spent most of it working with cattle. It was the second assignment I had in one week that I felt called for an audio slideshow. It was also one of those assignments that wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be.

My photo request told me that Cliff Ward, who sold his own farm 3 years ago, was still very active helping his son Albert who has cancer on his farm. I went to his house the night before the assignment to collect audio. I found out that Cliff's health started deteriorating two years ago leaving him unable to do much of the hard labor he has been doing his whole life. Then once out at the farm the next day there just wasn't anything going on to photograph other than Cliff and his son standing in the field with the cattle. It was plenty of material for the newspaper, but not enough for my slideshow. Albert now hires most of the work done since both his and his father's health have been bad. I had already told Cliff I was making the slideshow and I wanted to see it through. I just shot my heart out trying to get as many different images as I could with so little action. I also photographed lots of old pictures and some of Cliff's awards to fill it out. Luckily a beautiful day and an interesting subject can go a long way which saved it. That is the thing about audio slideshows, just because the story is compelling or it sounds interesting the number one priority is having enough visually compelling material to work with. Otherwise you are left trying to make something out of nothing much which can turn into a big waste of time for you and the readers.

Read the story here.

Check out the slideshow here.