During the pandemic, Christine Briggle and her husband, Todd, contracted COVID-19.
“We couldn’t go anywhere and I felt terrible, so I decided I would just go outside,” she said. “Thank goodness for my iPhone.”
Briggle started taking pictures around the farmstead that she and Todd own about three miles west of Schleswig.
“I just started taking pictures – and nature has a way of healing,” Briggle said.
She found a built-in audience for the pictures on her Facebook page during the pandemic.
“I don’t think they’re spectacular, but some of them are good,” she said. “I like putting them out there because it’s something positive on Facebook.”
Todd works for a farmer in his off hours and picks up corn spilled in the fields after combining.
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He spreads the corn in the Briggles’ windbreak, which helps it become a source of wildlife subjects for Christine.
“That’s what’s been drawing pheasants and some of the deer,” she said. “After Halloween we throw our pumpkins out in the windbreak so that the wildlife has something to eat.”
The windbreak is close enough that she takes most of her wildlife pictures from inside the house.
“I don’t have to get dirty or all bundled up,” Briggle said.
One of her recurring subjects is her morning mug of coffee.
“I love my good dark coffee,” she said. “I love thrifting, and my big purchase is usually a new coffee mug for the next picture.”
She downloaded a free app called Snapseed to process her pictures.
“If I like a picture, I will keep it and add filters. I can waste so much time editing those pictures,” Briggle said.
She crops out the wind turbines in the fields near where they live.
“I don’t want them in my pictures,” she said.
Briggle bought a Canon Rebel camera to give herself a more-capable camera, but she’s still learning to use it.
“I do work with that – but I don’t really know what I’m doing,” she said. “Most of the time it’s my iPhone.”
Briggle has rheumatoid arthritis and back problems, so taking pictures is often part of the motivation that gets her up and outside.
The other part is a six-month-old puppy named Maggie.
“She gets me up and going and I bring my phone with me,” Briggle said. “I’ll walk around while she’s doing her thing early in the morning, and I get some beautiful shots. It’s just comical because the ones that I post that everyone loves are the ones that I snap when I don’t even look.”
She was challenged by a difficult time in August.
“I could not even walk without a walker the whole month,” she said.
“I prayed to God and I said, ‘I will share what I can with everyone.’ I feel this is kind of my way of sharing his beauty, and I think I see things other people take for granted. It’s a pleasure to share it and it makes me feel good.”
She hopes people enjoy the pictures she shares.
“I hope they don’t say, ‘Gosh, there she goes again. She always has to post that coffee cup,’” Briggle said.
She has been posting a lot of pictures of pheasants in recent days.
“I can just stand here and know what time it is by when I see those pheasants,” she said. “They come out about 4:25, and I zoom in on them because I’m in the house. Sometimes they turn out pretty good. It’s just fun.”
Owls are on her list of subjects for the winter.
“A friend told me there are some Saw-whet owls that have been spotted up at Moorehead Park in Ida Grove,” she said. “It’s quite a walk into the wilderness there to get to see them. My walking is just limited, and I have good days and I have bad days, but one of the days this winter my goal is to get a picture of a couple owls with my Canon Rebel.”
Her talents have not gone unnoticed.
Cobalt Credit Union in Denison purchased several of her pictures to use as new office decorations, though Briggle said she has not yet seen which pictures they chose.
A family member also asked her to photograph his wedding.
“Well, it’s totally different taking pictures of people than it is taking pictures of a sunset,” she said.
The pictures turned out well as a wedding gift, but wedding photography wasn’t kind to her back, she said.
She is more interested in subjects like one that came up one night when she was at a laundromat in Denison because their washer had broken.
“It was a crazy night; it had been stormy and I was folding my clothes, looking out the window,” Briggle said.
“The sun was setting and I thought, ‘My goodness that is gorgeous. I have to hurry up and fold my clothes because sunsets go pretty fast — get it while you can.’”
She thought about where to go to get a spectacular picture and realized that the old Union Pacific Railroad bridge was just down the street from the laundromat.
“I thought of that railroad bridge – not realizing that they were going to take it down,” she said.
She caught the sunset, the bridge, and a train headed toward her.
“I bet the engineer thought, ‘move away,’” Briggle said. “It was not something I set out to do.”
The effort was worth the trouble – the picture was liked 171 times on her Facebook page.
Briggle said she doesn’t plan to stop taking pictures anytime soon.
“It keeps me sane,” she said.