Tuesday 4 June 2019

A shorter weekend

It could have been a three day weekend with sheep dog trials on from Friday to Sunday. I gave Friday a miss as there were jobs I wanted to get done. Such as stocking the empty freezer so I could eat! fate being what it is that was the best day for weather of the three. By the time I made it to the trial on Saturday the day had turned wet and windy. Hey ho away we go again.

For some reason, no matter which body/lens combo I tried I was having focusing problems with the longer lenses. Combined with the damp I was feeling like packing in, going home and never photographing sheep dogs ever again.

As usual I started off looking for 'scene setters' showing the location and layout of the course but the focussing iproblems weren't helping. Shown small I can get away with the longer range pictures but they don't display well much larger than seen here. I was trying to get across the distance involved by showing the distant sheep/dog on the hill for a sense of scale, Alongside a wider view the sense of distance is (I hope) conveyed.



My late arrival and the many curtailed runs saw the trial end early. I didn't get much photography done but did add to my collection of dogs in vehicles.


I also spent some time taking pictures of the recently clipped sheep in the exhaust pen.




Towards the end I was getting action shots in focus.Something I did improve on was capturing the shedding of a single sheep from a group of three. Not perfect but it gave me the idea to try to make a better attempt of making a sequence of the process.



This was day two of the three day Deerplay Hill Trial.  The best dogs from the first two days go on to the main event, a double gather of two packets of four sheep. This trial is a real tester, even the first two days prove too much for many, the second day sorts out the best of the best.

I arrived shortly before the start and saw the pen being enlarged and the Facebook live-stream being set up in a livestock trailer. The picture of that not being as I'd have liked because I was trying to keep out of shot of the iPhone!




After a fairly dry start rain arrived in waves and the wind picked up so much that holding a camera steady was a struggle. I didn't bother much with 'close ups' of the action and, like most people, took refuge in my car for long periods where I got frustrated and a bit bored. I made a few attempts at shots from the car.


Eventually the rain gave up and the sun even showed its face. But that was right towards the end of a long day.

Usually the judge stays in their vehicle while judging, but a times he got out and even walked on to the trial field for a better angle. This made for something different. Also an example of when captioning pictures could help explain what's going on.



As always I was looking for pictures around the action.






One of the competitors was spending some of his down-time taking photographs. As you'd expect his focus was on dogs in action, no doubt close-ups. We had a chat about the problems and challenges of photographing sheep dogs. I can see that his knowledge of working dogs will give him an edge in predicting what is likely to happen next. Always a good thing when photographing action.


If I was interested in that side of photography I'd invest in a longer, better, zoom lens. But that's a road I don't want to go down! As ever I got to pondering the difference between the sort of pictures 'insiders' take, and are expected to take, and those 'outsiders' take and the difference the intended audience makes to how you approach a subject.

At the end of the day I joined in the photographing of the overall champion with his dog and trophies. I let everyone else get the front on view and settled, intentionally, for shooting at an angle as I wanted to get the post and the hill in the frame. Hoping to catch something less than static I did the paparazzi trick and rattled off a load of frames in rapid succession. Not my style at all!


While that shot is not much different to the phone pics which appeared on-line within minutes I took one which I like much better despite the lack of handler and dog.


Something I've been thinking about is how getting too involved with a subject can lead to a shift from taking 'outsider' pictures to 'insiders'. There's a risk of the pictures becoming too journalistic or editorial. The things recorded can morph into the expected ones taken in the accepted style. That's one reason I don't usually do the posed winner's pictures, or take portraits of people with their dogs. I'm trying to show the unexpected and make pictures which work as pictures or have some strangeness to them while still being essentially documentary.



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