As the title suggests, this photo was taken during a break in shearing. There were four shearers on this hot sunny afternoon in mid-September, they had been shearing since around 08:00 hrs and were steadily making their way through around 800 sheep. It was hot and dry outside, the sun high overhead, and hot and sweaty physically demanding work in the cool dark shade of the barn. The photo was taken mid-afternoon, when the last of the sheep to be shorn were in sight. The shearers were quite tired by now, drinking plenty of fluids while they rested, and sharpening their shearing blades and checking their mobile phone texts.
I have a similar photo to this (elsewhere on the website) that was accepted into an Open Exhibition at a local arts centre which I was quite pleased with, as it was the first time I had really photographed people at work without feeling horribly self-conscious and in-the-way.
I spent most of the day with the shearers, and Tom whose farm it was, just photographing all the sheep movements. If you have never lived or been on a working farm, it is quite an eye-opener just how busy a shearing can be – not just for the shearers, because the sheep have to be continually moved around from nearby fields to holding pens to shearing pens, physically man-handled into position and once shorn returned to the fields… So besides the four shearers, there was a someone to continuously be sweeping up the wool and stuffing it in large sacks ready to go for sale at the wool auctions, and Tom and his assistant to continually move the sheep around ready for shearing. It was a non-stop operation for everyone else as well.
I have kept my shearing photos quite contrasty – in this example it serves to illustrate the cool shade of the barn in contrast to the bright hot day outside, but also because it reflects the hard work – it is a physically tough, hot, sweaty and gritty environment, with grease from the lanolin in the fleeces, dusty and generally grubby, accompanied by quite a pungent aroma too, of sweat, sheep, and sheep droppings. The shearers are paid by the fleece, so with four working alongside one another it is also a very competitive environment.
Whilst working, aside from the generally quiet bleating of the sheep, the only sound is of the (electric) shearing machines, and the clatter of hooves on the barn floor as each sheep is shorn and released. When the shearers take a break – a ‘smokoe’ in Oz – they are truly exhausted. There is some banter but not much. Here they are checking texts on their mobile phones and changing or sharpening the blades on their clippers. The guy at the back on the floor had strained a back muscle – an occupational hazard of shearing – so spent most of his breaks lying on his back with his legs up in efforts to ease his back muscles.
I quite liked the composition of the photos of the break taken from this viewpoint as it shows a different side to the usual sheep shearing photos, plus the image clearly tells a story – I like the way that everything leads away from the foreground towards the shorn sheep in the barn door, with the tufts of wool scattered on the floor showing that it has been a hectic few hours and these guys are just kicking back and relaxing, engrossed in themselves for a few minutes break.