I sometimes ask myself the question “how did I end up doing this?” when I find myself in unfamiliar situations, but it’s the challenge of doing something new that drives us on and opens up new realms of fresh opportunity. Thus, I found myself at the Northumberland Show this year photographing alpacas as a favour to my brother who had been asked by the British Alpaca Society to take a few unofficial pictures. In case you’re wondering why my brother might have been asked to take photos, and why he passed on the request to me, it’s because with his wife they own Beckbrow Alpacas and they had a couple of their animals entered in the judging so obviously didn’t want to have too many distractions while they were tending to them.

It was a lovely day but mostly basking in shade-less sunlight with the animals and handlers/officials mostly standing in that shade-less sunlight and wearing white coats or black suits, but no-one said it was supposed to be easy! The British Alpaca Society had a running commentary on each of the gradings as well as giving the gathered crowd vast amounts of general information about alpacas, and they had a good crowd, several people deep, gathered all the time. The crowd obviously found the judging process as engaging as I did, the analysis of wool, the comparison between animals, the deliberating as well as explanation of why one was a winner vs coming second all proving to be an easy way to pass the day.

As animals, they are quite different from the sheep I would usually have expected to see, quite fun to look at and with all that wool quite cute and cuddly really. Photography wise I’d never photographed anything like it before, but after a while settled on a location where I could capture the majority of goings-on without delaying the proceedings or getting in the way of too many people who were watching… and without risk of being too close to the alpacas to get a stray kick. I had to keep low as all the wool around their heads typically meant their eyes were not visible enough from a human-standing position to draw you to them.

A very different day from the norm with the camera, but lots of fun and a great way to try something different that was very enjoyable. Here are a set that tell the story of the day.

Filed under: Misc by browellphotography