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Thank You for Showcasing California Agriculture!
We’d like to extend a big thank you to everyone who participated in this year’s California Farm Bureau Photo Contest.
Your incredible submissions truly captured the beauty and diversity of California’s agricultural community.
We’d also like to thank all who took the time to cast their votes in the People’s Choice category.
Your votes helped shine a spotlight on the creativity and talent within our Farm Bureau family. We look forward to announcing the winners soon!
1st place $1,000
2nd place $500
3rd place $250
People’s Choice $100
Six Honorable Mentions $50
1st place $250
2nd place $100
Cayden Pricolo, a plant and soil sciences major at Oklahoma State University, has an insider’s perspective on growing specialty crops after an internship at Bowles Farming Co. in Los Banos and riding alongside her agronomist dad. While this knowledge can be helpful in the classroom, she finds her photography can say even more. Pricolo’s winning photo captures the hands-on harvesting technique for watermelons in Los Banos. “Especially in the ag industry, photography is a good way to advocate and show the rest of the world how the ag industry is done,” Pricolo says. “Without these people doing this manual labor, we wouldn’t be able to have successful farming to provide food for the world.” Pricolo used a high shutter speed and natural backlighting to perfectly capture the airborne fruit.
Mel Resendiz can’t possibly choose from among the more than 300 varieties of protea flowers curated over 30 years at Resendiz Brothers farm in Fallbrook. “I keep every one. When people ask me what’s my favorite, I say, ‘All of them,’” Resendiz says. But he will admit he was particularly inspired to capture the first harvest of the Lady Di protea, one of the newest on his 250-acre flower farm in the Pauma Valley. Protea flowers are some of the oldest flowers on Earth and grow on steep hillsides. As one of the workers scaled the hill with fresh Lady Di blooms on his shoulder and the Palomar Mountain in the background, Resendiz had to pull out his iPhone.
“This is a cow I usually use for work,” begins Mishael McDougal, a classroom educator with the Dairy Council of California. This photogenic, 4-year-old Jersey, whom McDougal calls Valentine, joins McDougal for nutrition education classes at local elementary schools. Valentine lives at Rachelle’s Jerseys in Visalia, a fourth-generation, 2,000-head Jersey-exclusive dairy. “She’s pretty laid-back. It didn’t take too many tries to capture (this image).” McDougal wanted to capture Valentine’s unique markings (a perfect heart shape right on her forehead) and maybe a new way to view dairies. “I think it’s an inspiring but also relaxing depiction of dairy farm life.”
Timothy Danley is a fifth-generation farmer who embraces technology to help him tell stories about modern farm life, including this drone shot of Danley’s father working lime into the soil. “Farmers tend to be secluded homebodies. (Photography) makes it easier to explain what we do and exactly what goes into it,” Danley says. This minimalistic shot reminds Danley of water confluence, where two bodies of water mix and combine colors, and clearly depicts agricultural advances over time. “My grandfather used horsedrawn harvesters for rice. Now we can cover hundreds of acres a day. I want people to look and realize one person can get so much done.”
Mariah Earl’s notable photo depicts the next generation of family farmers, learning the ins and outs of agricultural life. Earl’s family moved to a 5-acre parcel about 20 years ago, cultivating a large garden and adding chickens and sheep five years ago. “We have been trying to learn more about being self-sufficient and teaching my kids that you can grow your own food,” Earl says. Another fun farm lesson? Helping Grandpa drive the tractor in the front yard, of which Earl snagged a candid photo in portrait mode on her iPhone 13 Pro.
This “goat stampede” was captured on a cool, cloudy day in Rough and Ready. “That’s a real place,” confirms Jocelyn Brown, owner of Restoration Land and Livestock, a prescriptive grazing company. Brown’s herd of 40 Boer, Savanna and Kiko goats is hired to graze on properties, helping reduce fire fuel load and chewing troublesome vines. While these goats “eat for a living” instead of providing meat or milk for cheese or soaps, Brown works to spread awareness of this other job for goats. “I want people to see goats as useful workers. They have something to contribute.”
Ashley Carreiro grew up around sheep, watching shearing in the spring and feeding baby lambs in the fall. “Now, I’m taking my two daughters to do the same thing,” she says. But for Carreiro’s winning photo, a different type of fluffy substance caught her eye. With her ISO on its lowest setting, Carreiro focused on these emerging buds of cotton on a friend’s farm in Riverdale during a scenic sunset. In addition to gracing the 2024 California Farm Bureau calendar as a winner, these photos also appear as artwork in the farm insurance agency where Carreiro works.
As Stan Grosz prepared to retire to his 20-acre raisin and cherry operation outside of Fresno, he dreamed of quiet mornings like this one: “feel-good time,” as he calls it. Grosz’s raisins are seen during harvest with his neighbor’s almond trees beyond, as the harvest moon sets in the background. “In this area, raisins and almonds are it, man,” Grosz says. “I wanted to show them both and represent what our area is like.” While a peaceful scene, Grosz captured it only one day before the photo contest deadline.
Larry Speed carefully set up his tripod to capture this shot of a nighttime harvest of almonds, using a long exposure and careful timing to capture the shaking of the trees. But he didn’t have to set any alarm to get this photo—he was already awake. “When they’re shaking the trees, well, it shakes our house,” says Speed, who lives on part of a 400- acre almond farm called Superior Fruit Ranch. Speed makes lemonade during the shaking season, using photography to share the “round-the-clock, necessary things that farmers do to get done what needs to get done.”
It’s not every day that snow blankets the notoriously green landscapes in Ferndale, where Mary Ann Renner and her husband have operated a 350-head organic dairy farm for 42 years. A blanket of fresh snow last January inspired Renner to pick up her Canon camera and telephoto lens. While the image of the rustic wood barn and posing cow looks like a postcard, Renner hopes her photos provide a real view into country life. “It’s not just a photo shoot. Every day our cows are out on pasture. This is how we raise our animals. It’s a great way of life.”
Ashley Jansen knows the extensive history of her family farm, first acquired via a land grant 150 years ago. She shares that the land is now primarily used to grow almonds instead of the sugar beets of yesteryear. These almond orchards surround Ashley’s house, bursting with blooms and perfect for a scenic walk with Sydney, Ashley’s dog. While strolling the orchards with Sydney, Ashley stopped to focus on the delicate white blooms when a helpful pollinating bee entered her shot. While a gifted photographer, Ashley gives credit to Sydney who “led me to the perfect photo opportunity!”
Super fans of this photo contest will recognize this budding photographer, earning accolades for her artwork for the fourth straight year. Natalie, who lives in St. Helena in Napa County, focused on the vibrantly green “baby grapes” in the vineyard behind her house she passes every day on the way to school. It took time to find the most photogenic bunch, says Natalie, who hunted throughout the vineyard before finding this shot. Natalie stays in the moment while shooting photos, relying on spontaneity and her mom’s iPhone. However, Natalie shares she hopes to get her own iPhone someday.
Winners of the 2022 Photo Contest
Easley works in land conservation, helping farmers, ranchers and forest stewards manage the land. Prescribed fires are used to improve grazing vegetation for livestock, reduce wildfire risk and increase the land’s overall health. During one such fire at a Nevada City ranch, she was struck by the way the sun’s rays were shining through the smoke and silhouetting the trees “in a very ominous and soothing way. … It was an eerily beautiful scene I wanted to capture on camera,” she says. So, she took out her smartphone and quickly snapped it. “The smoke and trees allowed for great lighting naturally.”
Winners of the 2021 Photo Contest
Schneider is a full-time police officer who lives on a ranch with several Clydesdales, sharing a private road with a neighboring cattle rancher. One evening when he went to check the mail and take out the trash, Schneider had his camera with him, hoping to get a good sunset photo. "Louie's a really friendly bull, and as I rode past, he poked his head up and just gave me that look, and I said, 'I've got to get a photo.'" He changed the photo to black and white because the texture was sharper and "it seemed to fit the mood better."
Winners of the 2020 Photo Contest
The Gills have been ranchers in Tulare County for five generations. Hannah Gill said her 2-year-old daughter, Hayden, likes to watch her father, Levi, rope cattle with friend Ralph Garcia on the family ranch in Exeter. Gill saw Hayden watching intently and snapped this Grand Prize-winning photo that captures family ranch life.
"She was so excited to watch Dad on a horse," Gill said. "She loves it. She loves the cows, loves the horses."
Winners of the 2019 Photo Contest
Kathy and John Brimmer are first-generation farmers. Although they had children active in FFA where they lived previously, they didn't go into farming full time until moving to the Smartsville area in 2014 to raise cattle. One evening, while helping her husband feed the animals, Kathy Brimmer saw this scene and grabbed her smartphone. "We have some phenomenal sunsets up here," she said. "Sometimes I feel like we're living in Hawaii."
Winners of the 2018 Photo Contest
Lincoln, a winery employee and son of a vineyard manager, is always out with a camera during harvest, in no small part because of the people who make it happen. "Napa Valley would not be what it is without them," he said. He found Armando Reyes harvesting merlot grapes in a Carneros vineyard. "When you're photographing harvest, there are certain people that you're just drawn to, because of their charisma," Lincoln said. "This gentleman was one of those people."
Winners of the 2017 Photo Contest
An early-morning cattle roundup at the ranch of Dan and Andrea Erickson near Yosemite drew Emela Brown McLaren's interest; she and a friend were there for a workshop. The ranch, founded by Dan Erickson's great-great-grandfather, once fed the builders of Hetch Hetchy Dam. McLaren said the ranch is still run much the same way it was in the old days. "It's a real honor to live in the San Joaquin Valley with all the farms and the cattle ranches, and the different things going on," she said.
Winners of the 2016 Photo Contest
The vineyard before first light "makes for a very surreal environment and very dramatic moments," said Andrew Lincoln of this view of the chardonnay winegrape harvest. "What really matters is the collective process behind the (wine) product—everything from the farmers who manage the crop to the stories of the laborers and to the wildlife who call it their home."
Winners of the 2015 Photo Contest
Using a wide-angle lens, Andrew Austin Lincoln captured this scenic view overlooking a chardonnay vineyard his father manages in Napa County. "The grapes and the rolling hills represent this as a region," Lincoln said, "and I had the fortune of being there just as the cloud formation highlighted the windmill."
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