This is not an everyday sight. Turning the normal or the expected on its head is a great way to start a story.
Susan says, “I love everything about Lucia’s photo: the smiling young lady with her barn boots, her attentive dog, the winding country road and her cow on a leash. At the very least this photo is an attention getter, at best, it is a terrific way to shake up your audience. What makes it work is the cow, of course. It startles the viewer out of complacency. ‘So you thought you knew where I was going, did you?’ It puts the storyteller squarely in the driver’s seat with the audience back on its heels, ready to listen.”
Lucia says, “The story behind this photo is a comical scramble to get out my camera, check exposure and focus to capture this unlikely tableau. I was seconds away from missing it all together. Then it would have been simply a picture in my mind’s eye left for me to try to depict in words. I don’t think any verbal description would have done it justice. A picture really is worth a thousand words. Don’t you think?”
How might you put this photo to work in your presentation? To launch a story about thinking outside the box? Or a story about the joy and pain of being different? Or…?
