The water buffalo is an essential farming tool along the Mekong. Here we meet one face-to-face and nose-to-nose. Thankfully, it was grazing on the other side of a fence. It is domesticated – the rope through the nose tells us this. My long lens brings us very close, close enough to see intimate detail we may have not been familiar with before. This is one of the greatest assets of photographic detail. It can take us places we may have never visited, such as the snout of water buffalo! I made sure to photograph it with only one horn and one ear showing. The rest remains hidden behind that gnarled old tree trunk. It’s almost as if this buffalo is trying to hide. It takes a confrontational position, yet won’t quite come all the way out to truly face us down.