The end of a long hot summer and an apology.

First of all the apology. I've only just discovered that I had comments enabled on this blog, but not the notification for moderating them. That's why anyone who has commented hasn't had the comment posted or had an acknowledgement. All a bit irrelevant now as I think this may well be the last post I make here having run out of things to say that don't repeat myself. Anyway....

I've been to thirteen agricultural shows this summer, and failed to find another after getting terribly lost, with only one day of light rain and no muddy fields to get the car stuck in. In some ways the photographs have changed, mostly because I'm getting in closer than I used to. There is a more inclusive look to pictures taken up close with a 'standard' or moderately wide angle lens to those zoomed in from further away to give the same frame filling effect. As an example, the shot above was taken with a 28mm lens.

Even so it has proved increasingly difficult to find new pictures of the old subjects. One thing that has helped is getting a lower angle. Again, being at 'sheep's eye level' increases the connection between viewer and subject. Thsi has seen me using the flip out screen a lot more than in the past. Not only does this save my ageing knees, it also means I can get out of the way faster when sheep are heading my way!

Unfortunately my camera was slow to respond in liveview, and the focus point difficult to move around. I was missing a lot of potential shots. So I bit the bullet and upgraded to a camera with better performance in this department. For once an upgrade has made a difference to my success rate. So much so that I find I'm suing liveview at least half the time now, and not just for low down pictures, it's useful for other angles too.

Another thing that's changed for me is posting sheep pictures to Facebook. I'm still no fan of the platform, there's so much about it that annoys me, but it is the easiest way to let sheep people find the photos and get an idea what I'm up to. It's a way of giving something back to the unwitting participants in my pictures and also opens up more interaction with people at the shows. There are other side benefits such as the odd free entry to shows and the occasional picture sale too!

It is not without some downsides, or maybe diversions. There's no doubt that the sort of pictures which go down well on social media are different to the ones I take for myself. The boxes are pretty easy to tick, though, so it's not hard to take the crowd-pleasers while still looking for the Lumbypics.

One break from sheep photography was a day spent concentrating on cattle. I wasn't too sure how that would go when asked to go along, but having a fresh subject was good as everything was new to my eyes.

No matter what the subject the problem is always the same - looking for ways to frame pictures that, with a bit of luck, tell a story, or at least put the viewer 'there'.

As well as trying to get in close I've also been making an effort to take more 'messy' pictures. Ones in which there is a lot going on and/or make a sort of abstract composition. Sometimes they work, sometimes they almost work, mostly they fail!

It's that striving for the perfect picture (unobtainable) that keeps me interested when motivation starts to flag. Something else that has kept me interested is starting to dabble in video. The new camera is easier to use a video camera. I've only been practicing technique and getting to know how it works so far, but maybe I'll plan a short sheep video out sometime.

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In the bleak midwinter

I've never been one for making plans, so no New Year resolutions for me! It's a case of carry on doing what I do and hoping something interesting shows up. not that much did during December. Dog trials were either non existent or the weather was rubbish. This coming weekend is looking equally grim in that department. It's been a case of local wanders in search of something to photograph in order to keep my eye in.

That's pretty much what I'm doing when I go for a wander. Try to make sense of what I see within the frame. If what I come home with can add to any project it's a bonus. maybe one day there will be enough to choose from to make a collection of local pictures that stands up on its own merits?

As usual my 'landscapes' always contain some element of human intervention. A rare misty morning dragged me out to the moss. While I was out there the mist was just a bit too much and wasn't for burning off. As soon as I got close to home, however... I don't know if I'm just unlucky with atmospheric conditions or I don't have the patience to wait for them to change!

There have been a few sunny afternoons to tempt me out but they rarely seem to provide me with much. When I wait for them to turn into glorious sunsets they usually do the opposite and clouds form on the horizon and it all goes to pot.

One sunny afternoon I was driving around looking for inspiration and failing to find it when I did what I often do when that happens. Go somewhere I have been lots of times before. In this case I wanted somewhere out of the wind and went to have a look at the sheep barn. It's in an even worse state now than my last visit.

Being a bit featureless it's a difficult structure to photograph, and the dark to light contrast of inside and out makes exposures tricky. It's a challenge, which is possibly why I keep going back.

Something made me think about why few hobbyist/amateur photographers do documentary type of work. It's not something that gets seen much on a photography forum I belong to. Most people take single images which fit one of the popular genres - wildlife, macro, landscape etc.

As I've always thought that wherever you live can be documented photographically it would be the obvious thing for people who take photos in their spare time to do. No need to travel hundreds of miles in the hope of the right weather conditions for a location, for example. Either pick your days, or hours, and pop out. Although given my track record of doing that maybe I'm being optimistic? That said, as with fishing, if you 'pop out' often enough you'll get lucky once in a while.

Then it dawned on me. The reason more people don't adopt a documentary approach is that it does actually take a lot of time. Not everyone can drop everything, any day of the week, and go take photographs for a few hours. I expect people with more ordered lives than mine find it easier to plan ahead to set a day aside for their photography. Even so that could still work for documenting the place you live. But all to often I see people say that where they live is boring to photograph, and familiarity breeds contempt. Maybe I just have a different way of looking at the world? I do think anything can become a subject for a photograph. It only needs putting into a context.

There also has to be a deal of commitment to carry on in the face of failure, a high degree of perseverance, to engage in documentary. Not qualities I'd ever associated myself with until someone on the forum said they admired my perseverance. I've always thought of it more as being a lack of fresh ideas. I stick with something because I can't come up with a better alternative, so my projects carry on!

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I'm sick of photography for photography's sake

Like most in this digital age I spend too much time looking at photographs on-line. Either website galleries or YouTube videos. The more I look at 'photographers' pictures the less they interest me. As a comment I saw on Lensculture when doing this put it about photobooks; "Most photobooks these days seem to be made in the category: art for art’s sake. It unfortunately leads very often to much ado about nothing." That's how I feel about a lot of the photographs I see - from all areas of phtotography. be that the 'serious' art world or dedicated amateurs. They all seem to be making photographs which fit the ideas of their area as to what makes a good photograph. I've done it myself.

Back in the real world I tried to find a sheep dog trial on Sunday. It was supposedly signposted but I couldn't find the signs! The day wasn't as bright as I'd hoped, so it might have been a wasted trip in any case. As I climbed into the hills I climbed into cloud too, but that gave me hope that I might find something to suit my idea of landscape to show what the moors are like in that kind of weather. I'd hatched a Plan B by looking on Google maps and set off for a walk, intending to reach a broken down building. I didn't manage to get that far before the cloud lifted, which didn't matter because no sooner had I stepped on to the moorland track than I saw Lonks. I spent my time photographing them.

I left it a fraction too late to grab a shot of a raddled tup. He'd stood in a perfect pose looking at me as I approached, but as soon as I raised the camera to my eye he started to wander off.

 

 That's what sheep tend to do. Maybe I need to get a longer lens for sheep photography?

 

Although sheep 'portraits' are well and good as the cloud lifted I tried to get some pictures which said more about their place in the landscape, and the place of farming in it.

The juxtaposition of the rural, yet worked, landscape and the urban, industrial areas not too far away is something I am always trying to encapsulate in photographs.

Then there are sheepscapes, where the sheep are the subject but they are small in the frame.

All the while I try to make photographs which work as individual photographs, but which will also form a body of work which can be accompanied by text. That's very much the way I'm thinking about photography these days. But not in the 'photograph as illustration' way, the pictures and the text should have equal weight - either could stand alone, but work together to say more. That's sort of what I'm hoping to achieve if I ever get round to putting a set of pictures together on this sheepy theme.

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Keepers

The last big sheep sale of the autumn for me was held on Friday. I went along mainly because I've had so little chance to photograph anything this year and because there wouldn't be another big sale at the mart for three months or more. It was only a short visit too as I really should have been getting on with some work!

It was no surprise that my enthusiasm wasn't high, nor that I was stuck for ideas beyond more repetition. As often happens when I'm in that frame of mind I started messing about with oddball viewpoints and framings.

While I was playing about I tried a different setting for focusing using liveview. It made a huge difference to my success rate! It was far from 100% foolproof but it was much improved.

Although there was a lot of the usual stuff to see there was also a chance to get some photos of a large pen of sheep being put through the ring, which is not something I can recall photographing before. I wasn't in the best position, but it's something to mentally log for future reference.

Mostly I was using the standard zoom having remembered it was versatile enough in the mart. The other option I had available was the new 90mm which I wanted to test out in the gloomy shed. As expected the focusing was a bit slower than it had been at the comparatively well lit poultry show. I coped though and in the sale ring it was fine.

A few days ago I read something (I think on The Online Photographer) to the effect that photographs can become more interesting with time. Up to a point that's true. However, it is content dependent. In the case of photographs which show people and man-made objects the passage of time lends every such photograph a status as a historical document. People age, fashions and designs change. These photographs show the past to the present.

I was considering this when reading a forum discussion about how many picture files people have on their hard drives and some commenters said they delete most of the photos they take and only keep the very best, some even going on to say there's no point keeping 'bad' photographs. Not everyone agreed with that extreme view. And again I think that is down to content.

If all you ever photograph are, let's say, macro pictures of insects then sure, keep only the most technically and aesthetically pleasing pictures. But if you photograph your family, friends or pets then pictures which are not going to win any prizes can still be personally meaningful. They may be 'bad' photographs, but they are valuable for other reasons.

The same can apply to photographs which are documentary in nature. They might not be well framed or focused but they might contain information which becomes valuable as time goes on. That could be something in the background which was insignificant at the time the photograph was taken but seen with the benefit of hindsight becomes more interesting than the main subject.

This is one reason I delete very few pictures. The only drawback for future generations is that these are all virtual pictures while they remain on a hard drive. A hard drive that will no doubt go to landfill soon after I pop my clogs!

I should use the lack of sheepy events and long dark evenings over the coming months to MAKE MORE PRINTS!! I wonder if I could turn my digital folders into print on demand A4 'contact sheet albums'?

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Sheep, sheep, sheep

Two days of madness this week with a breeding sheep sale held over two days. 5000 plus ewes on day one, 300 plus tups on day two. The first day being a long one. I had flagged by two thirty and as much mentally tired as physically gave up, but the sale carried on for another four hours. no doubt one of the staff when asked how he was shortly before I left said he'd be all right by the following night!

I didn't arrive too early, knowing it would be a long day, the light would be rubbish early on, and that sheep would be arriving for a long time after the seven thirty start. I had plenty of time to get arrival pictures, something lacking in my files.

 

There were sheep everywhere, in all the available permanent pens, in the temporary pens and anywhere else they could be accommodated.

All the usual problems were to be overcome. Finding new ways to show things being the main one, but there were also technical problems like white balance variations and the lack of light. On sunny days there's some ambient light finds its way in and brightens the inside of the sheds. Two days of gloom were what I was up against.

 

I find myself using the flippy screen a lot to give my self a sheep-level view. And always struggling with the awful autofocus using the screen. It might be time to spend some money on a camera with better liveview focusing. Or I could get my knees replaced so I can get lower and look through the viewfinder!

Knowing day two would be less hectic I made a slightly later start. There was the usual stuff to see and the usual pictures to make. In the main shed I used my two prime lens approach, which is becoming my preferred way to operate if I can. Aside from the lenses being lighter than a pair of fast zooms the shutter sound seems nicer too. It probably isn't though.

 
28/50mm is a great combo, but I might try 20/35mm for a change some time. Even if it's only to see if I can live without the 35.

 
In the ring, which is much better lit, I ditched the long zoom and went with my all-purpose zoom. If it gathered more light I think I could live with it as my only lens. If only life was that simple!

Once more I find the pictures with lots in them the most interesting. I made an A3 print of one from an earlier sale and it 'works' much better than as a 1200 pixel wide jpeg on a screen. There's a pleasure to be had in looking at the expressions on the faces of the people around the sale ring as well as having a picture which works as a whole. Much more engaging than simple close ups of a few faces. For me at any rate.

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A long day

Another Saturday, another show and sale day.This time it was two shows and two sales. In some ways more of the same old, but with a twist in the shape of a different breed. OK, so the first show and sale was Gritstones, which were again well represented by breeders on large and small scales. The second show (which I missed most of through being in ringside for the Gritstone sale) was of North Country Cheviots. A confusing breed for me as they come in two varieties - Park and Hill. I have no clue as to the difference!

This time I was better prepared in the lens department using my fast, standard, zoom for most of the time, switching to my versatile but slightly slower lens for the sale where the light is much brighter. I also used the faster lens when I wanted to go a bit wider. I also took my 85mm along to see if I need it. I don't. It's a lens I've never gelled with despite the focal length's popularity among the massed ranks of photography forum users. My plan is to trade it, along with my teleconverter, for a macro lens of some sort. Probably a 90mm. I don't often need a macro lens but it will get more use than the 85 and will at least do something my other lenses can't.

Some Cheviots.

Although there were more Cheviots being sold I spent more time with the Gritstones, and by the time the white-faced sheep came to the ring I was getting brain tired. Even so I did get some different angles.

Something I have noticed about my show and sale photographs is that I make a lot of pictures that have a lot in them. Whereas other 'sheep photographers' tend to go for more tightly framed shots. I don't know if this is good or bad. I do try to adopt both approaches, but I like looking for wider views with some visual rhythm to them, and also try to keep an eye open for random intrusions into the frame, odd croppings of figures, and other accidents. These seem, to me, to add vitality to the pictures which rigidly composed shots can sometimes lack.

Some Gritstone pictures.

Another thing that's been in my mind again (I've mentioned it in the past) is that my approach  to this sort of subject is less journalistic than it might be. Other photographers seem to manage to record the prize winning sheep and the ones which make the most money. If I any of those make it into my edits it's by pure chance - unless I'm asked to photograph them! I suppose I'm always looking for pictures that give the flavour of the event rather than the straightforward documenting of facts. As Tom Wood said, "When the stuff is too journalistic and documentary then it is journalism, if it is too conceptual and arty then that is another thing, but where the two meet - that is interesting." That's my excuse - and I'm sticking to it!