FOG hangs thick and heavy on the rolling hills and slopes that defines Vacy, Hunter Valley dairy country.
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The first rays of the new morning sun have barely begun to pierce the sky, let alone warm the earth that David Williams and his son, Andrew, walk on to get to their herd of patiently waiting cows.
“The cold mornings make it difficult, this time of year, but you get used to it,” Williams says.
Every morning, while it’s still dark, Williams meets with around 340 of his dairy cows – a mix of mostly Jerseys and Holstein Friesians – to let them in to the dairy for their first milking of the day.
“Cows are very habit-driven, they know when they need to be milked, so they’ll start walking themselves over to the shed when it’s time,” Williams says. “They always come over in the same order, over to the same side, right to the same spot, every time. Cows need routine, which is one of the reasons we get up so early.”
Getting up early has its advantages. The air is still and peaceful and the light is soft and warm. Dairy farmers, like David, love to take advantage of this time of the day, because it means they can get their cows in and milked early before tackling any other work that (always) needs to be done around the farm. Professional photographers will tell you it’s the first golden hour of the day. David Williams knows this better than most.
“I reckon, probably up until Twitter came out, I wouldn’t have taken any more than a 100 photos,” he says. “When we were kids, you took every photo really carefully, at birthday parties and things, because you only had a certain number of shots in a roll of film…
“Now, you can just click away until you get the right shot, and then upload it to Twitter or Instagram and people will see it straight away.”
A quick glance at David’s Twitter and Instagram (@david_vacy) reveals a stunning natural spectrum of greens and greys, blues and browns, pinks, purples, whites, yellows, and black. This is the colour palette that nature provides him. They’re gifted to Williams from all quarters of his corner of the Earth. From the ground, all the way up to as high as the moon.
The subjects are beautiful, the composition is skilful, the details are revealing, humorous, and, sometimes, even shocking.
“Yeah, the kookaburra photo was a bit of a freak shot, I think,” Williams says.
In April, Williams captured a photo of a wide-eyed kookaburra with a dead mouse in its mouth. It almost looks cartoonish with the mouse suspended in the air within the grinning bird’s beak, its front legs outstretched like some sort of rodent zombie.
I’m no pro. I don’t really think about what I’m doing when I take the shot. I’ll just be working and see something that I think would make a good photo, whip out the phone and try and snap the shot.
- David Williams
“I was really surprised at how close I could get to him. He was just so quiet and calm,” Williams says. “I don’t know why. I don’t feed them, he just found the mouse near the veggie patch, and I just happened to notice him.”
The photo is accompanied by a very short film of the kookaburra ‘tenderising’ the mouse on the edge of the garden bed. It’s shocking, sure, but that’s just the way of nature, from time to time.
“I copped a bit of flak from a few vegans, which were a bit over the top,” Williams says. “Others said I should have done something, but I just let the comments run their course.
“I mean, what did they want me to do? Run over and give it mouth to mouth!”
Other more benign depictions of the dairy farmer’s life include gorgeous Hunter Valley sunrises and sunsets, afternoon ‘traffic jams’, curious faces reflected in the water troughs, long tongues and wet noses, and a rather conceited cow spoiling a farmer’s attempt at a selfie.
“I’m no pro,” Williams says. “I don’t really think about what I’m doing when I take the shot. I’ll just be working and see something that I think would make a good photo, whip out the phone and try and snap the shot.”
Earlier this year, Williams won a couple of prizes for his photographs at the Gresford Show. First prize for portraits was awarded to Williams for a photo of his granddaughter, Hailey, receiving a hug and a lick from one of her best friends on the farm. Williams also took home the award for Most Successful Exhibitor at the same show.
“I don’t really enter my photos for shows and that sort of thing, but I suppose it was nice to get those awards at the show this year,” he says. “I just like posting them online, you know… It’s nice to be able to show people a little bit of life on the farm.”
David Williams capturing his farm life through a lens is beautiful to see, and just one more reason to thank a farmer for what they do.
