She wondered later,  "Why me?"

I was leaving the Farmers' Museum, but knew as I was leaving that I should turn back and photograph her. I said to myself, "There's a picture there," and turned back.

You cannot photograph quietness, but I think it was the woman's quietness that drew me to her. I had also noticed that she was not pretty, but had regular features, that she did not screw her face up when speaking, held herself upright and looked directly at me when we spoke. And then there were her two handsome Swiss calves that she had been talking to, as she let them out after the rain. They had a direct way of looking at you too.

I have never been drawn to photograph excitable and flamboyant people. Or as the French philosopher Roland Barthes put it, "I do not like acrobatic photographs."

The woman's name is Sandy. As we sat in the farmers' coffee hideaway at the museum a few days later, she looked at the picture and said how glad she was that the two calves had been so well behaved.