I selected this image of sheep shearing A) because I like it, and B) because it partly illustrates some of my comments and observations in my description of my Image of the Month from April 2022.
The colour image worked well, but because it was taken into the sun, the sheep and the shearer were both in shadow, and the colour tones had to be enhanced to avoid too much shadow effect and weren’t overly harmonious with the bright blue sky background, hence I felt that it worked better in monochrome. (The faded purple vest that the shearer was wearing didn’t help the colour harmony either.) You can actually see some flare from the sun just behind the sheep’s head – I tried to position myself with the camera so as to have the sun right behind the sheep and the shearer. I had little choice as the sheep were being shorn on a temporary platform, and in order to see the face of the shearer I was looking directly into the sun.
Admittedly the shearer could have been slightly more central to the image, but then I would have not caught the sheep’s head so clearly. The shearers were working hard – it was hot and sweaty work – and were moving around a lot (as were the sheep!) – and with a lens right under their noses it was not the time to ask for a pose. But also, is the photo about the sheep, or the shearer? The shearer is clearly focused on his work. The sheep is being shorn and is quite relaxed, leaning back against the shearers legs and looking directly into the camera. The shearers face is clearly seen and is nicely framed by his hand with the loose tufts of shorn wool – descriptively illustrating what is going on here.
For me this is quite a dramatic photograph, almost candid, of the sheep being shorn, rather than of the shearer. The sheep is the main subject, is clearly at ease with the shearer, and is almost casually observing the camera as if it’s attention is being distracted from the shearer and looking over it’s shoulder at the camera.
I did not have a wide angle lens at the time, so this was taken at a focal length of 24mm using a Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lens. Had I had a wide angle lens, a slightly wider focal length of 20mm or 18mm may have been my preferred choice, but frankly with all the movement there was little time to align and catch the subjects in a specific position – I took about about 20 or 30 images to catch this one – thank goodness for digital!
I shot at a relatively high ISO despite the bright day, as I needed a fast shutter speed to catch the action without too much movement blur, and also a smallish aperture to catch the detail – note the small tufts of wool flying about – and the whole time I was exposing for the shadow despite the bright ambient light.
Whilst I would not claim this to be a perfect image by any sense of imagination – I feel that the shearer could be better centred – it does encapsulate many features that make it stand out from the rest of the batch. Most importantly, it could not have been done with a longer lens – I was up close to the action, maybe no more than 4 feet away looking directly upwards into the faces of the subjects.