I set out today to photograph the winter pasture, with my Canon camera and a 14 mm wide angle fish-eye lens, and I came across Million Acres farm in Salem, N.Y., where I once stopped and met the dog Nixon (he had another name as well), and I stopped and loved this image of the winter pasture, spread out under a riveting sky. For once, I had the right lens.

These photos have heartache for me, as well as joy. Rural areas everywhere are dying, farmers losing their farms and their way of life to the new economy that frightens people, gives them bad jobs or takes them away. Our rural communities are broken, lost in the new theories of economists and corporations. So I feel a strong compulsion to photograph them while I can, and find solace in the notion that one day, people will look at these photos and recall what they allowed to be lost, so that they can live better at Wal-Mart.