Animals are another favorite subject of mine and I like images that bring a smile. Included are my images of dogs wearing reading glasses, reading their favorite book. However, alpacas are also a great subject. Without props they bring a warmth to the moment. Our good friends Jan and Cecilia have a farm with alpacas that are just natural born hams.
Jan & Cecilia say one of the best parts of having an alpaca farm is sharing. Every year they look forward to their Open Farm days when they invite the community to meet the crias and visit old alpaca friends. This year the Open Farm is September 24 and 25, Saturday and Sunday.
At Wheatland Alpacas they have made a commitment to educate those new to the world of alpacas. They are hands-on owners who do the day-to-day care, management and training. Breeding for temperament and conformation has been as high a priority as breeding for fiber quality. They take pride in knowing the alpacas personalities. Prior to buying their first alpacas in 2003, they attended shows and handling workshops, read everything they could, visited farms, dreamt and planned for over 2 years. They feel honored by the confidence many local farms have in their ability to work with alpacas. They are often called to help with birthing, shearing, and monitoring pregnant dams.
You are invited to visit Wheatland Alpacas at:
Jan Kruper & Cecilia McKean
2010 Stovall Road, Walla Walla, WA 99362 509 526-4847
Usually for animal images I use a tri-pod. This works well for "studio" shots taken in my living room. However, for outdoor shots, such as with the alpacas, I find a mono-pod works the best. The mono-pod relieves the camera shake associated with hand holding while it is not be as restrictive as shooting from a tri-pod. Mono-pods can be relatively inexpensive. Mono-pods are also very good for shooting sports, especially youth sports.
The second hint for this type of shooting is to get the camera between chest and eye level of the subject in order to minimize the distorting caused my looking down at or looking up to the subject. Also, I tend to use an ISO of about 400 with an f-stop between 5 and 8. This tends to minimize the distracting detail in the backdrop and allow for a faster shutter speed. Of course in the above case I used Photo Shop to isolate the alpaca and impose the animal upon a sky-like backdrop.
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