My Favorite Image Of 2020.

It was late in the afternoon on that June day.  The sunlight was starting to rake over the hillsides.  This
Amish farmer was hoeing his field by hand.  As the giant cumulus clouds started to form and
billow, he stopped, turned away from my position, dropped his hoe to his side and seemingly placed his
right hand over his heart.  The farmer, being a deeply religious man, I found it easy to make the assumption
that he was admiring the wonder of nature before him while addressing the Lord and thanking him for all of his blessings.
Olympus E-M1 Mark III; 40-150mm f/2.8 lens + MC-14 tele-converter @ 130mm; 1/2000th sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 200

A while back I mentioned in a post about picking a ‘best’ image versus a ‘favorite’ image of the year. You can read that post here.  One of my readers, Jeff, commented that maybe I should pick out more than one and let you decide which you think is best.  I would really like to do that but I just don’t have the time this year. Although we’ve now sold our home and moved during the past couple of weeks, there is still plenty I need to do.  I just don’t think I have the wherewithal to sit in front of my computer and go through all of the images I made in 2020 then try and choose a best one.  As I previously mentioned, best is so subjective anyway.

However, I will post my ‘favorite’ image of the year.  As soon as I made this image and subsequently saw it on my computer monitor, I knew it would most likely be my favorite image of the year.  Maybe in several years.

In June, while the COVID-19 virus seemed under control, businesses started reopening and life was kind of returning to some sort of normalcy (that didn’t last long, did it?).  We decided a short road trip to meet our friends Dave and Cindy (TwoLaneTouring.com) in Lancaster, Pennsylvania’s Amish country.  We were determined to relax a bit, photograph, eat well and share the experience all the while maintaining masks and social distancing. After a week, none of the four of us were negatively impacted.  This image was made on that trip.

Dave and I spent much of the time each day roaming the beautiful early summer countryside of neat farms and rolling hills looking for photographic possibilities—and there were many, many.  Our wives had other matters on their agenda so the temporary daily separation worked out well for all of us.

Since Dave and Cindy mostly travel pulling their small but very high quality (think Airstream but even better) trailer, they normally stay in a campground while my wife and I stay at a nearby hotel.  One afternoon, about dinner time, all four of us were sitting around in the campground just enjoying each others’ company and conversation.  At some point Dave and I became aware that one of the Amish farmers who attend to the fields across the road from the campground was manually hoeing the field while another worked the field behind a horse-drawn plow.  It is the Amish farmer who was hoeing who is the subject of this image.

As he worked his way up the hill, some late afternoon huge cumulus clouds started forming behind him.  I made several images of him as he hoed but then he stopped, turned away from me and, what appears to me to be raising his right hand to his heart, stood motionless for a several seconds.  It was almost as though he was stopping to stare at the wonderment of the awesome clouds and the magnificence of nature before him.  I ensured he was in sharp focus and made several exposures of him as he stood motionless.

I love everything about this scene.  The setting, the colors, the time of day, the clouds and the pose—even the inferences and implications.  It just all seemed to have come together perfectly to me.

I'll call this serendipity—an unexpected and pleasing find.  I hope you find your serendipitous moments all through 2021.

Join me over at my website, www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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