THE HOOF TRIMMER - There are no schools training people to do what Phillip DeHaan does for a living. He's just an average guy who does one of the dirtiest jobs on the farm: he trims hooves and dehorns dairy cows. The work is important as without healthy hooves cows produce less milk.


Phillip was surprised that I didn't want him to get too cleaned up for his photograph. He was covered with flecks of cow dung...the price you pay for spending any time on a dairy farm. It was a windy day so I set up the lights and background in a barn but they kept getting knocked down no matter how I secured them. The cows weren't too happy to see us there either as they were mooing loudly. I spent the shoot alternately looking through the viewfinder and trying to catch the equipment before it hit the ground. By the time we finished, little specks of dung were on most everything.