A Little News

Faces at an Auction II- He wan’ts how much?, originally uploaded by Chris Frear.

A Little News reader Chris Frear lives in Scotland and freelances for the local farming press. What follows is Chris’s description of his shoot on a sheepdog sale where he captured this captivating image of farmer’s watching the sale. Last year, I did a post on shooting the edges of an event, not just the event itself. This photo is a perfect example of a photographer keeping his eyes open for photos outside the main event. Nice work!

The “faces” photo was taken at a sheepdog sale over in Moffat last September. The basic gist is that farmers turn up in a muddy field and watch a series of young sheepdogs being put through their paces with a small flock of perhaps five or six sheep. After each dog is run, it is auctioned to the highest bidder. The better it runs, the higher the price. The whole thing lasts about 4 hours on a good day. I was there covering the event on a freelance basis, selling some action shots to the farming newspapers.

The farming press usually only require a single photo of the highest priced dog. But four hours doing the same shot of the higher priced dogs over and over is mind numbing. To keep alert I would often photograph candids of the people in the audience during the bidding. Once I get home from an event, I download the cards into the PC, emailing off the pictures for the papers. I had forgotten taking this image until that point. I found it and several other candids, which from my point of view I liked much better than one of a dog.

The event is held every six months, and the Farmers were grumbling at the recent sale in April as it was being held during lambing season. It was also bitterly cold. The reporter standing next to me disappeared to warm up in the nearby cafe, coming back about an hour later asking if she’d missed anything. She had, the highest priced dog had fetched over 2,000 Guineas! All livestock auctions across the UK are still done in guineas, a guinea is worth £1 and 5 pence, or about $2.10

Being a country/rural photographer is different from being a photographer for a London newspaper. You still have to earn a living wage. But you’re considered part of the community first and a photographer second. You have blend in but be remembered. And most importantly you have to be prepared to get mucky and to help out. If you can manage these requirements you’re going to be OK.

I get invites out of the blue to events or requests to photograph a family gathering from people I may have met once weeks or months ago. The “joke” in the family is that if I come home mucky and/or wet through then I’ll have got a super image. I broke my foot last year in a local river trying to get a shot and ended up, up to my arm pits in freezing water. There was no point in getting out as I had no icepack, so I stayed there in the water for 20 minutes, got the image I was after. By the time I got out, the cold water had minimised any swelling in my foot! I was lucky not to get hypothermia, but hey I was having fun! I had to help wrangle a flock of sheep last autumn. The shepherd and his wife I was photographing just couldn’t do it on their own, they needed a third person (me) to help move the flock up the pen so the shepherd could man handle the sheep one at a time through a footbath. A week ago I had a call late on a Friday night asking me if I was busy on Sunday, I said no (I really should learn), so there I was last Sunday in waterproofs covered in mud, in the rain getting action shots of dogs at an agility day. Did I enjoy it? You bet. It was also great for marketing/networking. This is dog, rather than cat country.

Please check out Chris Frear’s web site and his Flickr photostream.
On his main web site you will see some of the most magnificent panoramic landscapes you could hope to see. It is beautiful work and I highly recommend you check it out. Chris’s entire site is very nice but don’t miss those panoramas.