Photoclubalpha

HI all,

Here are few native Northumberland critters in full winter coat, from my trip along the roman wall last week

One sheep



Three and a bit sheep



Lots of sheep



Snows all gone now

Best wishes

Murph

Oh no - not a sheep thread!

We have enough of those on the guitar newsgroups I visit. Especially with reference to Welsh guitarists and wellies.

Not to mention locally in the Borders where we get the Australian joke all the time - 'where men are men, are sheep are afraid...'

But, I have to agree, nothing beats a Cheviot blackface for surviving in all conditions and still providing a fleece worth all of 50 pence because of Chinese competition, plus the benefit of being inedible due to extreme toughness once it's got old enough to provide the fleece!

David

I like them all, but I like #1 and #3 the best! Good work!

In my opinion, if you can sharpen the face and eyes in #1 a bit that would help the image a lot. As for #2, I like that the 3 sheep are all looking the same way, nice, but the 2 sheep in the background are distracting. It looks like it might be fairly easy to clone them out and I think it would improve the image. This isn't criticism since I well know that you don't exactly get to arrange the sheep as you want them. You take what you can get. Also, if you prefer not to go as far as cloning then I certainly understand that too. I generally don't like to do it either and rarely do. In this case, I suspect, you could probably do it pretty easily though with good results.

edit: I just remembered that I have Firefox set to enlarge the text on this page and it also enlarges photos. It makes the first photo look pretty unsharp, but if I reduce the size it looks better, I guess.

Help! Cloning sheep. That is something we NEVER mention in Scotland!

David

David Kilpatrick wrote:Help! Cloning sheep. That is something we NEVER mention in Scotland!

Touche!

One more comment. Again, I realize we all have our own aesthetic sense and mine may not agree with yours at all, but having said that I think #3 might look a bit better if the fence in the foreground is cropped out. I keep going back and forth about that so I can easily see how others might disagree. I really like the hills and farmhouse in the background. The sheep with that background really makes this a nice image. Anyway, just another comment.

I was going to suggest that if the fence disappeared and that you pasted in 10 to 15 Scots Borderers in the middle ground then you would have a very traditional scene for this time of year,given the Scots long standing affection for English sheep.

But that would be a bit of naughty racial profiling wouldn't it ?

Henry, you took the words out of my mouth, I liked #1 and #3 the best as well, especially #3 with the scenic background and the size of the sheep not overpowering the setting/scene size wise too much, and I also was going too mention the fence but I mmmph glmpf bit my tongue, rembering no one agreed with me on the black posts in an otherwise really nice scenic seascape of Murphs on an earlier occasion.
Greg

I do like #1 and 3 the best. In #3, cropping the fence would make the hill look smaller, and throw the whole scene out of whack, IMHO. It IS a bit distracting, and it would be better if it just wasn't there, but I think if you took the time to take down the fence, the sheep would probably be gone, and you would be sitting in the pokey with a mad farmer waiting for you with a pitchfork when you got out!

Those sheep have beautiful coats, but their face is even uglier than mine! It's amazing the differences between breeds. My Dad raises goats, but has had a lamb or 2. Next time I get up there, I may have to get a few shots of them, and the Shetland pony that's taken up residence in his corral. (It's a neighbors, he has no fence, and the goats don't mind him.)

Dusty

Thumbs up, Murph.

#3 is my winner - the backlight and the combination of the sheep with their surroundings is wonderful. The fence in the foreground does really not add much to the image, and when re-cropping you might even try a landscape format without sky - I guess it would work just fine.

Markus

Thanks for the comments guys,

I tend to agree the fence is best removed - and the sheep looks better minus the blue (thanks Don).

The green dye on the coat is, I think some way of identifying who owns the sheep - fences are fairly poor up there and the sheep roam over a wide area - I may be wrong as I dont have an in-depth knowledge of sheep and I don't own a pair of wellies either!

Cheers

Murph

Hello Paul,

I like all the original shots by you in their unaltered state. They are more authentic with the fence and the bluish faces which probably happened because of the shiny dark fur reflecting the white of the snow covering the land.

Actually I truely enjoyed the sheep shots! I'd love to see more of British sheep but I fear David Kilpatrick may object for reasons he knows best to occur around forums...

The colour patches on the sheep as you already implied are to distinguish the sheep of a certain owner from distance. In Turkey the colours vary from red to any colour the owner loves...

Thanks for sharing as always
Yildiz

Wonderful shots, Paul. That third shot gives some amazing depth and atmosphere to the setting, I can't help but shiver for cold when I look at it!

I just had a funny thought. I wonder if that sheep with the blue face and blue knees might *really* have a blue face and blue knees? Maybe it had some hanky-panky with the sheep that has the blue dye on its back.

bakubo wrote:I just had a funny thought. I wonder if that sheep with the blue face and blue knees might *really* have a blue face and blue knees? Maybe it had some hanky-panky with the sheep that has the blue dye on its back.

You're not far off! That blue-bottomed sheep is an ewe, the blue dye is there so that it's owners may tell which of their male sheep has, um, mounted it.