Lonk mania

Some time back I read an interview with a documentary photographer who travelled the world to take photographs of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. The other day I read of another who had to leave their homeland in order to be inspired by other cultures. What a load of crap. If you look hard enough there is plenty out of the ordinary to be seen anywhere, and if you get involved at a local level you get a much deeper insight of and appreciation for what is going on. For all Martin Parr's global travel he still photographs in the UK and comes up with subjects which are far from ordinary for most people. Homer Sykes has been photographing in the UK for most of his life. Both have created huge and fascinating archives of British people being ordinary.

My accidental falling into the world of sheep shows and sales has provided me with plenty of pictures of ordinary folk doing things which are ordinary to them but extraordinary to outsiders like me. Until I delved into the history of Lonk sheep I would never have thought that  there was an annual sheep show which had been taking place for nigh on 300 years less than an hour's drive from where I live. But there is.

Ever since I found out about this show I've wanted to visit it. Unfortunately the date always clashed with my one chance to deal direct with my fishing rod customers which gave them a chance to get hands-on with my wares. In 2019 I decided to give this tackle show a miss and go photograph the Lonks. The best laid plans and all that saw me getting wildly lost and arriving too late. Last year the show was cancelled. This year the dates didn't clash. Although I ended up missing my tackle show through being ill. I'd recovered by the following weekend and, with the route firmly lodged in my head and a map by my side, I made it to the sheep show!

There was also a sheep dog trial taking place in the field nearby so I arrived early to take a look at that. The set up wasn't ideal for photography with the dogs running behind a fence which restricted my view. When the trailers began to arrive for the sheep show I headed up to it.

In practice it was like any other small sheep-only show. A few pens set up in a field. However this was Lonks only, which meant the real die-hard Lonk breeders were in attendance. Faces I hadn't seen showing at other, larger, shows.

Not only were the sheep of one breed, they were also the best of the best, in that it was a show restricted to those which are registered by the breed society as meeting all points on the breed standard. Sheep judged to be up to scratch are then horn branded as a sign of their status. This is something which I wasn't expecting to see. So it was a nice bonus when a pen of sheep were branded. This is a painless experience for the sheep as the horn is just like a fingernail and without feeling. There is lots of smoke though.

With that out of the way it was on to the judging of the many classes, which went on all morning and resumed after lunch. There wasn't anything markedly different to any other shows when it came to what went on, but I was getting pictures in a new location. There were also larger entries in many classes than at other shows.

This show was the first time the society secretary had to show my zine of Lonk show photos to the members with most events having been cancelled due to Covid-19 since she received it. Another copy I had given away at Kilnsey had also been passed around and I was pleasantly surprised how well it had been received. The comments people made to me about it and the whole thing of documenting their shows and sheep made it all worthwhile and convinced me to carry on.

A week later I was back at the mart for the first time since lockdown one. And I was photographing Lonks yet again! The occasion being the annual show and sale of registered sheep. I've attended this before so I knew what to expect. I had, unfortunately, forgotten how dimly lit the main shed is and found my latest favourite zoom lens just a little lacking in light gathering. I took most of my photos around the pens 'old school' using my 28mm and 50mm lenses. This worked surprisingly well. 

The day starts with sheep being penned, primped and their lot numbers for the sale attached.

That is followed by buyers weighing up which sheep they are going to bid on.

Next up is the show. There aren't as many classes as at the previous show, but entries in one class were much higher. How you pick the best from 27 sheep I have no idea. I went for a bacon and sausage butty while they were whittled down!

After all the classes have been judged the winners of each class come together for the selection of the champion and reserve.

With that done the auction could commence.

The 'dance' of breeder and sheep is always likely to provide pictures which convey the action taking place. It's tricky to get good angles as positions outside the ring are limited and the buyers have more right to be ringside than I do. So it's quite challenging. Which is what makes it interesting.

Autumn is when the tups go in with the ewes, so this is when there are plenty of sales taking place for sheep farmers to select new blood for the breeding season. That means I'll be back for more in the near future!

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The final showdown

Autumn brings short days which limit the chances to get out and about in daylight. Especially for late risers such as myself. With lots of work to catch up on free time to go take photographs is limited. Besides, my interest in wandering round looking for random pictures is waning. That said a free couple of hours on a sunny evening can tempt me out and occasionally produce a picture that  is nice in itself but doesn't really have a purpose.

A fortnight ago was this year's last big show of the season. In normal years there would be two more to follow it, but these are not normal times. I made sure to arrive in good time in order to avoid queuing to park and the lengthy walk from the parking area. That much worked out fine. Even by nine it was baking hot. The show catalogue revealed that the sheep judging was being split into morning and afternoon sessions for lowland and hill breeds respectively. It was going to be a long, hot, day waiting for the Lonk judging.

I looked for some pre-show action but had missed most of that. Took some random snaps of breeds I don't usually spend much time with and tried to find quirky stuff while I waited for the main event.

In the any other breed class were a few pens of Whitefaced Woodlands which gave me some action to photograph during the morning. They are probably the breed which interests me most after the Lonk with them being another of the more neglected Pennine breeds in terms of photographic fans. It seems they are partial to carrots.

Much smaller in size, and undoubtedly cuter, is the Portland. A sheep with ancient roots.

With the morning judging over I went for a wander. The alpaca ring was mildly entertaining, but with the show being spread over two days as a Covid precaution there was no poultry show the day I was there, nor was there much other livestock.

Vintage tractors are, to my eye, limiting in appeal. I think the best way to deal with them would be photographing the restoration work. Otherwise it'd just be pictures of tractors. Which I know does appeal to tractor nuts!

By the time he hill sheep were to be judged the heat had started to get to me. I was feeling in need of a lie down in the shade. As I imagine the sheep were. For whatever reason the turnout of Lonks was low, while the Gritstones were out in force. Luckily they weren't being judged concurrently so I got a chance to look at both. Not that it worked out too well. I reckon that my brain was suffering from the heat and I just couldn't make anything more than record shots.

After the Lonk judging I went back to my car for a rest and a long drink of water. Refilled my small water bottle and tried to catch the end of the Gritstone judging. Although feeling a little refreshed I was still floundering. When that judging was over I'd had enough. I couldn't face waiting for the overall hill breed championship.

Aside from the photographic side of things, which was disappointing, it had been an enjoyable day catching up with sheep people and having a day in the fresh air. Sometimes I think that is why I keep going to these shows. After all, I'm not a documentary photographer. It doesn't matter whether I take photos or not.

It's odd, but I have noticed recently how it's becoming increasingly the case that some hobbyist photographers (which I suppose is what I am) are labelling themselves, sorry I mean self identifying themselves, as documentary photographers in the same way that others call themselves 'landscape photographers' or 'street photographers'. Does it make them feel more important? Do they think it makes their pictures better? I dunno. I'm just a bloke with a camera.

I do know that quite a few of the photos I've seen by this cadre of photographer seem to lack any effort to be made as pictures. Sure they document things, people, places, but there's a lack of structure to the photos which turns them into pictures and makes them say something about what they show. Look at really good documentary photography and you see pictures, often with a degree of complexity to their form which lifts them beyond being record shots. I don't manage it too often, but it's what I strive to do with my photographs. Just another pet peeve of a grumpy old git!

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Sheep again

In a normal year the show season would be winding down as August drew to a close, but it has felt more like it's building up this time round. One show which is usually held in June was cancelled for a number of reasons, however, such is the desire among the afflicted to show sheep the show committee hastily arranged a sheep and vintage tractor show with just twenty days' notice. This took place on a cold and windy hillside on the Sunday of the Bank Holiday weekend.

Despite the timescale involved and no widespread publicity there was a goodly entry of sheep, particularly in the Derbyshire Gritstone classes.

There were Lonks too. At one point during the judging I got myself down low in a corner as I was sick of the liveview focussing being useless when I held the camera low and used the flippy screen.. Whereupon the sheep were gathered up in the corner of the ring I was knelt in. Not being as nimble as I used to be I couldn't escape and got squashed by sheep!

Once more I was wondering why I was taking the same old pictures, and convinced myself that this time it was to record a new show location.

I post pictures of sheep quite regularly on Twitter but they don't get much 'traction'. However one I posted from this show became my most 'liked' picture yet. It's not a particularly good picture, but the sheep is definitely photogenic. Strangely this experience hasn't made me want to take more pictures of pretty sheep, rather it's reinforced my desire to avoid them! This was one occasion when the liveview autofocus had time to work...

 
Two days later I was off to a more distant show for which I'd got a pre-booked ticket. This time there were more Lonks as well as Grits. Lots of other sheep too but despite the variety I still find I am drawn to photograph the breeds which I have more interest in from a historical or geographical point of view.

 
I often find myself struggling to decided between making 'good photographs' which maybe appeal more to photographers and 'good records' of what I'm looking at which might help explain something to people who are unfamiliar with what is shown. The photograph above of the phone is trying to be a 'good photograph', the two below are trying to show clearly what is taking place.

I suppose there is a place for both sorts of picture. The ones I find myself keener to study in other people's work are the informative shots. 'Good pictures' provide a quick hit of admiration, the broader pictures have a more lasting engagement. This isn't to say that the explanatory pictures can get away with being poorly structured, ore need to be framed in a 'conventional' manner. Trying to make pictures which inform and have more to their construction than unconsidered snaps, I think, is what motivates me.

There is always room for close ups - although some people seem to take more of them than any other type of shot. These two being as much about fingernails as they are about sheep showing!

There was also a sheepdog trial at this show. I didn't take many photos of the trial, but spent a bit of time watching the action, chatting with people I've got to know and and listening to the banter. I was ill equipped to photograph the action so had to resort to cropping files to make pictures which worked.

With one more show coming up this week I'm still contemplating giving sheepish subjects a miss from now on. It's got to the stage where it is starting to feel like I'm going round in circles and getting nowhere. If I had some sort of target to aim for, to concentrate my thoughts around, then I'd be more inclined to keep at it. As things stand all I'm doing is amassing a load of files on my hard drives which will never get looked at by anyone but myself. This seems like the height of futility.

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Inbetween times - part 2

The strange hiatus continued after my previous post. I continued to be stuck for places to go and things to photograph. As a result I carried on my adventures with artificial light to occupy my time and mind while work was slow through lack of materials. I got so slick at the flower photography, on both black and white backgrounds, that I began to lose interest in that. I mostly concentrated on the black backgrounds and developed my technique somewhat courtesy of some retail therapy. 

 

 

My local wanderings weren't proving very productive, but noticing that the old café on the bypass had had some work started on it I took an evening drive to have a look. That was worth the minimal effort.

 

 

Then, at long last, it was Showtime! Taking no chances I'd booked a ticket for the Royal Lancashire Show on-line (along with a couple more tickets for upcoming shows) just in case there would be none available on the gate.

 

 

Naturally I made sure I'd booked for the day the Lonks would be on show. While I hung around those most of the time I did wander a bit and grab a few shots of other breeds.

 

Although there had been some rain the day before I went to the show it stayed dry but overcast and very warm. By the following weekend the weather had turned wet and the Garstang show saw me and my gear dripping, but still warm!

At both shows the variety of sheep breeds being exhibited was broader than I've seen in past years with a few new ones being shown. One such being the Clun Forest.

This made the Any Other Native Breed class large and varied!

However, the numbers of Lonks and Gritstones was down.

The following week there was a sheepdog trial in the Lakes which I had to miss as the long awaited materials had started to arrive and work needed to be caught up on. The weather continued to be changeable. There seemed to be rain every day, but there were some short sunny spells during which I managed to get out locally. Unfortunately without out much focus and hence without much success.

Yesterday there was a small sheep show, stick show and sheepdog trial in Barbon. The forecast was iffy and as I'd been feeling a bit lost with the sheep show photography I was in two minds about going. It was the prospect of catching up on a lot of work when even more materials arrived on Thursday which convinced me to take a chance. the further north I got the wetter it got. It wasn't as bad as it had been at Garstang, the rain was light and showery, but I still didn't feel at all motivated. I had intended to use just the 50mm and 28mm lenses, but bottled it and took a couple of zooms along for the ride. It wasn't long before one of them was welded to my camera.

In truth I got a little bored of photographing the sheep show and wandered off well before all the classes had been judged. If there had been Lonks I'd have no doubt stuck around. I had a look at the sticks, but they don't move much and I think it's things happening that I like to photograph.

The sheepdogs were moving well enough, but the sheep were recalcitrant and of the four runs I watched no sheep were penned. I wandered back to the sheep pens where everything was done and dusted, everyone in the luncheon tent and the sheep all alone.

All in all a frustrating and disheartening couple of months which has mainly resulted in my wondering what the bloody point is of taking any of these photographs. Particularly in the case of the ones which are not much different to ones I've taken many times before. I suppose some might say they do this in an attempt to make better versions of existing pictures, and I have said it myself. There comes a point, though, when it's very much marginal gains - and there is no such thing as the perfect picture.

Having paid for tickets in advance I'll be going to the shows they are booked for. Whether I'll get anything out of my visits - in terms of enjoyment and photographs - remains to be seen. If not  that could be my lot with sheep. It's not as if the sheep showing world is lacking photographers to record it!