So much fun

I was asked to take some pictures of some new construction at a local farm yesterday. It was a really great shoot and it pushed my creativity to try and capture interesting photos of the new buildings. Those photos will come later, but until then, I will be sharing some photos of the animals that I came across while wandering the farm because the animals pictures were a ton of fun to get.

I got there right as the sun was rising. It was a bit colder than I like, but it was nice getting there early before the grounds open up to the public.

When I got close to the pig enclosure, I think they thought I was going to feed them, because they all woke up at once and came running up to the fence to see me. When I had been here before, the pigs are usually fed and they don't really pay much attention to anyone.

Let me explain some of the thought process that goes into how I create my images. For this shot, I felt that this little pig was pretty cute and I wanted to show off how little he is. So I positioned the bar at the top of the fence to be at the bottom of my photo. Normally, having something like this be in your shot and take up so much space and be nothing more than a blurry spot at the bottom of the image is against the rules of photography, but I like to break those rules as much as I can. I felt that putting the bar at the bottom of the image, it kind of made the pig look like it was looking up at me and kind of over the bar, which I felt makes the image a little more interesting and intimate.

Now, this image is pretty cool. The fence looks a lot like grid lines for the rule of thirds. Normally, you want to have interesting parts of your photograph on the lines or where the lines intersect. But as you can see, the pig in the front breaks those rules. The snout is pretty much in the middle of the image and his eye is pretty much in the top right hand corner of the image. This shot normally would not work because it breaks the rules, but since I have a pig in the background and the snout is on the intersecting lines in the bottom left and the pigs eyes are right on the top line, this balances out the pig in the front and what would have been negative space that wouldn't have made as much sense.

As you can see, taking pictures is more than just pointing the camera at stuff and hoping for the best. I try and fill the frame of my images with stuff that tells a story and brings emotion into the images.

I had quite a bit of fun taking pictures of this guy. He was super interested in what I was doing as I was taking pictures of the animals near him and he just kept staring at me.

He was staring at me in an almost judging sort of way. He was either judging me or trying to figure out why I was not feeding him. Either way, I thought it was pretty funny how he was staring at me. There were some birds on the fence near him and thought it would be cool to frame them all together and tell a story.

According to the AI on my phone, these birds are Guineafowl. There were a bunch of them wandering around near the llama and they were climbing on the ground and fence just squawking and making all sorts of weird noises.

They made their way closer and closer to the llama and I just waited for the perfect framed shot.

Then I got it. When I got this shot and saw the llama's face just staring at me, I started laughing. I wish I knew what animals were thinking.

I just sat there and let the animals just wander around while I got shots of them. It was nice using my 70-200mm lens so I could get close to them without having to actually get close and scare them.

Overall, it was a pretty fun shoot. I really enjoyed being there on the grounds before they opened. This little farm usually gets pretty crowded with families and small children. It is a cool place where people can learn about farming and the different advances that have been made in the industry.