Sheep etc.

[Ed Sutton]

Tomorrow? Maybe more lambs....

Yep.

The two that were tubed are now feeding themselves and looking much more lively.



Back to day 1.

Much of the work involved moving sheep around.

From the lambing shed mothering up pens...




... to the pens where they stay for a day or so in small groups.



Then they go out to the fields or the fell. Twins to fields with better grazing, singles to the poorer fell.









More...

 

[Ed Sutton]

Other jobs were tagging, tailing, and castrating.





I didn't get a good castration pic yesterday, this one's from day 2.



Ewes and lambs have their tags recorded.



Ewes that don't like their lambs get put in the naughty box. They can eat, drink and lie down, but they can't be nasty to their lamb which can suckle unmolested. After a day or two they should have got used to the lamb and be fine to be let out.



All is peace and quiet.



Last lot...

 

[Ed Sutton]

I was only stopping by today on my way to look for some illustration pics for the book, but one of the Lonks started lambing.



Missed focus again FFS.



Fresh out of the oven.







Fifteen minutes after being born the lamb is looking for its first breakfast.



That's a wrap.

The rest of the day was totally unproductive.

 

[Ed Sutton]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEOlXOtDRzU

 

[Boots]

Wow! What a set of images. The one of the two lambs being carried caught my eye, but lots of great ones.

 

[Ed Sutton]

Wow! What a set of images. The one of the two lambs being carried caught my eye, but lots of great ones.

Thanks Paul. It's not easy, but fascinating and fun. Learned a lot too. Quite dark in the shed, and very dark in the old loose boxes where the small groups are put, even when the sun shines. And things happen pretty quickly too so catching the best moments is tricky. Especially given my incompetence!

 

[Ed Sutton]

There's could be the making of photo sequence for the book from this lot. Just a first play around.

 

[Ed Sutton]

I had a day driving about looking for landscapes relevant to Lonk sheep. Without much success, but at least I've crossed some off my list. I did did find some Lonk lambs. Surprise, surprise!

This one was being pestered by a bee.



Keeping out of the wind behind mum.



Still searching for a 'turbines with Lonks' picture.



Another heavily processed 'sheep on sloping hill ridge' black & white.



Taking a lengthy detour to avoid sitting in a tailback, and to look for elusive landscapes, on my way home I pulled over on a moor road to let some motorcyclists get past, and to have a look at a possible scene. The view had potential but the light was very flat. However a quad bike came into view, ridden by a Lonk man I know and his four passengers! Sadly the sheep were Cheviots.

Luke always a smile on his face no matter what.

 

[Ed Sutton]

For once I set out to do some landscape type photography hoping the sun wouldn't be too bright! my target was the stone 'room' at Steve's out door sheep pens. I've photographed the inside before but always had to push the ISO up and struggle to deal with exposing for the view through the window. The plan was to use a tripod and blend two exposures.

When I got there I remembered my camera will do this automatically, saving the two raw files and a blended jpeg. That worked OK. At least it looked OK on the back of the camera. When I got to the PC I tried blending the raw files, but preferred the jpegs. Then, just to see what would happen, I boosted the exposure in one of the darker raws. With very little fiddling I ended up with the result of the three I liked best. And no noise as I'd shot at base ISO. It's witchcraft!

That's the end of the technical stuff. I have posted pics of the 'room' before but this is a set that, with explanatory text, might make the book. A fire was lit to heat the bowl which was used to boil up a winter dip mix. This went on until the 1970s. I have a suspicion that there might have been an earlier use for doing something similar for 'salve', which was an old method of protecting the fleece in winter. It was a mixture of Stockholm tar and butter which was laboriously applied by hand to each sheep. It could take 40 minutes per sheep!

In the autumn, the fell sheep were salved. A mix of tar and fat was rubbed into the skin along a strip where the fleece had been parted. Then a strip was parted an inch further along and again and again for perhaps 40 minutes until the animal was completely waterproofed and protected from disease and parasites for the winter.

https://www.duddonhistory.org.uk/washfold-background/

The location.



Front view from the pen area.



Inside. Not sure if this looks over-processed.



The fire place.



The bowl.



Then I went to look at another feature that I'd shot before, but not from this side. A stone 'through the wall' trough. Again I used the loathsome (and broken) tripod.



I did photograph sheep. The results are pretty mediocre.

 

[Ed Sutton]

Some of the sheep photos weren't too bad.

I was just too late to catch Steve feeding round and checking the Lonks.



After their afternoon snack it was time to relax in the sun.





Not long before this ewe lamb's tail drops off.



Portrait.

 

[Ed Sutton]

an old "scanned" film shot of mine which I have probably posted before

I started another thread for other people's sheep photos. https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/show-us-your-sheep-shots.752508/

 

[BillN_33]

I started another thread for other people's sheep photos. https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/show-us-your-sheep-shots.752508/

I've just deleted it - thanks

 

[Ed Sutton]

I've just deleted it - thanks

Ta. It's a nice summery pic.

 

[Ed Sutton]

That's me done with making an effort to photograph at sheep dog trials. I'll go to the odd one when the fancy takes me, but not on a regular basis. Might even part with my telephoto zoom to give me an extra incentive to stay away!

 

[Ed Sutton]

In an attempt to get out of a rut I thought I'd challenge myself today buy going to the sheepdog sale with just one rather clunky camera. I bought this Coolpix A when Amazon had them on a discontinued deal for peanuts. The optical viewfinder cost almost as much as the camera! The image quality from the camera is great - by my standards it's too sharp if anything. But there are number of drawbacks. The major one is that the auto focus is painfully slow, and unless I have it set to beep when focus is achieved I often miss shots even then because it won't shoot until it's focused. overall it's pretty clunky to use. The optical viewfinder was a less than brilliant addition. Not only is it impossible to see the frame lines easily when wearing specs, they are less than accurate. On the plus side I like the 28mm equivalent focal length, and as said it makes nice pictures.



The plan was to try zone focussing (f8 and be there). Trouble being the distance scale in manual focus isn't very precise, and every time the camera is switched off to save the battery (did I mention the pathetically short battery life?) the lens refocuses to infinity. For some shots I used autofocus - and missed a few shots.

It was another sale with not many entries, less than 40, and not many in attendance. Prices were pretty good though.

I did take my main camera and lens combo (I was thinking I might call in somewhere on my way home), which I used for a handful of shots, but I'd got into the fixed focal length and the balance of shots was 230+ to 35 in favour of the little camera. I'll post some more later if there are any worth sharing. But for now, can you tell which camera took which of these two?

 

[Ed Sutton]

Lesson's learned:

1. Using a lightweight camera that can slip in a jacket pocket is nice. Not that I think it makes you any less invisible.
2. I'm comfortable with the 28mm (or equivalent) angle of view.
3. I prefer a viewfinder, or flippy screen, and autofocus.
4. Shooting from the hip is rubbish (and feels like cheating).
5. Unlike, it sometimes seems, almost everyone else I'd rather have the greater DoF from a wide angle/smallish sensor than the super shallow DoF.

Not a great bag of pics, although more than I expected at the start of the day!

 

[Ed Sutton]

It's time to stop playing around with the book design and get down to taking the photos to fill in the gaps.

In the meantime I'd be grateful for any thoughts about the cover design concept (I'm looking for two pictures I have in mind to replace these), and the title/subtitle given the contents list.



The indented sections are photo-centric, the others text based.


e.g.:



An example of how a pic I just threw in as a placeholder to check the layout worked actually looks pretty good in the dummy I got printed. Here if anyone fancies a look. Definitely NOT a final edit for what's included, and the text is mostly waffle, or 'lorem ipsum'.



The start of show season is a week away. I've plenty of show pics so I'll be trying some different approaches, and doing a lot of networking to get the on-farm pics I need if I'm going to make the 200 pages I'm aiming for!

Thanks for looking.