The Farm

So. This is the farm. 


What can I tell you about the farm? This farm isn't ours. Nor do we live there. It's a family farm that we're very privileged to be close to. It's just twenty minutes from our place, up in the hills. Actually pretty much the whole farm IS hills. We go there quite a lot. Lots of our 'free' hours are spent  there. We light fires and have bush barbeques. We cut wood and play in the creek. We climb hills and chase sheep. One day when the weather is just right we'll camp out there! And I take photos. Lots of them. So I thought that Friday posts could be all about farm imagery.

There is something about the air, the colours and the space that creates great images.

On this day I tried to sneak up on the sheep. There were baby lambs and I wanted some close-up photos in the paddock. I headed down the paddock and immediately all those ewes (mother sheep) were eyeing me off. They didn't like the look of me. So I sat down for a while and waited, still they watched me, sometimes taking turns. Baa-ing to the lambs and telling them to stay out of the way...

Well, I didn't have all day to sit and watch them watch me! So I decided to slowly walk towards them hoping that they would settle and realise I was harmless. The image below is taken looking along a contour (a man-made raised bank of soil running across a slope that helps to stop topsoil being washed down the hill in storms). The sheep use this contour in this paddock as a track. They've walked the surface bare exposing another feature of the farm; rocks.

 

There was no fooling them! Even though they appeared to be looking up the hill, as soon as I started creeping along the contour they were on to me. The lambs were told to wake up or stop skipping about with the others and come to mother. Then the whole lot of them ambled  off down the hill only to then turn and peer at me through the long grass. So this shot is the closest and most in focus shot that I got.

 

And this is the sole lamb shot - oh dear. Well I will get my chance when we have them in the yards for lamb marking. I will be able to get close then! Really though, my compensation was the walk in the sunshine with the breeze blowing across my face. 

 

And with that I headed back up the hill. Albeit with a slightly wry smile on my face. It was soon a real grin when I stumbled across this little green dam. It was worthy of a thirty second stop in the sunshine and a few snaps, I thought. The polaroid filter on the lens has made the sky just gorgeous in the landscape shot and the water weed in the portrait shot had interesting texture that I liked.

So all's well that ends well isn't it? Especially when I've managed to grab twenty minutes in my own and spent them in the sunshine, out in the lovely clear autumn Australian air on the farm. Yay!

As a little bonus bit of fun when I was writing this blog I decided to 'play' with one of the images (because I'd over-exposed it with autumn light) and below is the result. I quite like that you can see what the shot is of, although the sheep are partly obscured. The colours are almost real, but just not quite. If I had hours to play and no washing to hang on the line I might be able to be much cleverer... but there are multiple loads of washing and beds to remake. So off I go, today I can only dream of being at the farm.

Do you have a place you go regularly that gives you air and sunshine? I hope you do. And if you like the country, Australian landscapes and farm images then come and visit on Fridays.