Purchasing a camera for ranch use

My brand new Canon 7D and two kit lenses (aka, personal sacrifices instead of a single L-series lens due to the purchase of a camera body) arrived today!! I am anxiously checking the battery charger every 5 minutes, and it has been doing the whole blink-three-times-in-rapid-succession thing it supposedly does when its nearly charged for over an hour! Ugh.
Outside there is a brand new calf, another soon-to-be brand new calf, and sunshine. And to think, my husband asked me what I was doing this afternoon, and looked at me oddly when I was snappish that the 4-wheeler was nearly out of fuel.
The poor man.
The thing I have learned this time around in buying a camera body is that it's like buying cars, hydraulic chutes or mineral in that every single option on the lot is nearly perfect to hear the sales people tell it.
Uhuh. I have a 1.5 year old Canon 60D camera being sent to Canon for the second time in four months right now that was "the best thing going" a year and a half ago. I don't know if it was the same sales person or not, but when I was explaining my issues the second time they developed - a couple weeks ago, the guy replied, "Oh, well it does have an aluminum body, which is more for hobbyists than professionals. He wasn't rude about it, but put emphasis on the fact that apparently the different materials Canon makes body's out of is a big deal.
So, rewind a year and a half, when I'm explaining to someone in this very shop that while I am not a National Geographic photographer, I use my equipment like one. It is outside, in the weather, occasionally covered in substances that could have come out of either end of a bovine or pig, and needs to stand up to things like moisture, dust, slobber, LA200, etc...
At that time I was told the 60D was the best camera for the money, unless I wanted to jump into the Mark series, which I did not because my budget did not allow for upgrading to an entire set of L-series lenses, which is all you can use on a Mark body.
We discussed thoroughly the advantages and disadvantages of all options before I made my purchase. The sales consultant was confident I would be thrilled with the 60D, and I was, at first, until a year into owning it, the camera began producing grainy and dull images. For something that was by no means cheap, and projected to last years, this was an expected and upsetting development to suddenly discover when reviewing a senior photo shoot.
So, to have someone at the same shop basically say, well duh honey, it has an aluminum body, was a bit irritating.
Then began our conversation on what I should buy as a new body that will hopefully stand up to the elements I shoot in a little better. And, what does this guy tell me. He suggests the latest, greatest, camera-of-the-year 70D, which is constructed of the same hobbyist grade aluminum as the 60D.
Seriously dude?!
We go on to discuss the 6D, Mark iii and 7D as well, and I get the stats on all four options, then agree to call back with my decision. I was this close (- -) to taking the plunge and getting the Mark iii, but again the ability to not use the majority of my lenses in combination with not having several extra thousand laying around to buy new lenses with stopped me. In the end, as I said above, I went with the 7D, which is made of the professional grade magnesium alloy, after emailing someone who is a year and a half into owning and using one the same way I would, with zero issues.
So, while I am tickled pink to have a new camera body, and realize that if they can fix my 60D I will no longer have to rent a backup body for weddings in addition to a few other perks, I am also a little irked that I am not lovingly gazing at a high end, low F-stop lens that I had my heart set on purchasing in 2014.
I should also point out that I am on a bit of a soapbox on this topic at the moment, but as a whole the camera shop I use is tremendous, and incredibly helpful. The people are very knowledgeable and provide top-of-the-line customer service. I have simply come to the realization that much like buying cars, chutes or mineral, buying camera equipment should involve a lot more research than talking to "the experts," and doing online comparisons. They have no idea what to say when you explain that while you take "good care" of your equipment you need to know how it will stand up to being chewed on by a baby pig, licked by a cow, hung on a fence in its bag in light snow, 50 mph blowing dust instead of the tame variety found in studios, and the occasional coating of vaccine. You need to go find a neighbor to ask about such things in order to get a feel for how your potential purchase will work in the real world.

Looking at the big picture

I just sold a picture, of a cow, for more than I ever have sold a picture for before. For some reason, when I saw the price, contingent on how large the photo runs of course, what came to my mind first was my mom asking an 8-or-so-year-old me why I thought I needed to take so many pictures of cows. I had to chuckle at how life turns out.
She was likely looking through the latest order she had picked up from the local drug store, and was gazing upon four of those paper envelope's worth of pictures, 95 percent of them being of cows, all of which I had made sure to get duplicates of. We do all remember what ordering pictures was like in the 1990's, right?
Even back then I would almost always have my camera and extra roll of film on me, and would happily crawl up fences, lay in dusty corrals and get soaking wet while snapping away at cattle, other ranch animals and anything else I found interesting. The sheer volume of cow photos I turned out resulted in a lot of good natured teasing from my family, and the occasional exasperated question similar to the one above from my mom, usually when she got home from picking up photos.

I took them out of my joy for cattle, which hasn't lessoned over the years, and I needed duplicates because I might frame one, and need the second for my 4-H record book, or just to have.
As I grew up, this photographing of cows only intensified. I would proudly show off my latest angle, and be told it looked just like the last 10 I had also proudly showed. There is no tougher critic than a member of my family, which I'm grateful for because they made me strive to come up with something new, different, better.
Over time, the frequency with which I was told my latest image looked just like the last 10 diminished, and more of my photos were given the stamp of family approval. However even today, you can see boredom begin creeping in if I show more than three similar photos in a row.

I also learned with time that no two people look at picture the same way, and that within a single image you will find people who love it and people who dislike it.
After aging out of 4-H, I decided to try entering photos in the county and state fairs. They did surprisingly well. A friend who saw them recommended I apply for a job at the University of Wyoming as a freelance photographer. I did, they hired me, the next year I was the paper's photo editor, then a professor's daughter asked me to photograph her wedding.
I continued entering photos in fairs, and received a "Best of Show" award at the Wyoming State Fair my second year. As my mom congratulated me on the award, she noted how funny life is that I had worked within the 4-H program for 11 years, and never won such a big ribbon at the state fair.
Following college there was more freelance work for an increasing number of publications, both mainstream and agriculture based. Then, I was hired as the assistance editor of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup, which introduced me to editorial writing in addition to photography.

A year and a half later  I left the paper, returned to my family's ranch and began my freelance career in earnest, broadening the list of publication's I wrote and took pictures for, and basically working like a madwoman because I was living my dream. Tucked away in the far reaches of rural Wyoming, surrounded by cattle and enough Internet service to send out an article most days, I was thrilled.

Then I fell in love, got married and moved to western South Dakota this summer. While I planned to just continue on with business as usual for the first few months, God had other plans. In the midst of the craziness that has surrounded us since our July wedding, I have been blessed with increased and new business within both my writing and photography careers.
Then this morning I sold a picture for more than I ever have before. And all this hit me, and I had to call and tell my mom, who was beyond excited for me. I also had to remind her of all those years ago, when she asked me about taking so many cow pictures. She just chuckled and asked me if I wanted them all back.

In moments like this I'm very grateful that God works in mysterious ways, and for my parents. My mom and dad probably wondered why in the world their daughter had such an insatiable urge to both be in the cattle business and document every day of it with photographs, but they were supportive.
As a result, twenty years after she asked, I am finally able to give my mom an answer as to why I need so many cow pictures, and pay her back for all those rolls of film!

They grow so fast

 Growing fast is part of the plan with cattle, and my husband's (and mine too now I suppose) calves have really put on the pounds this summer, making us both very happy. Here are a few photos from last week, after we moved them to fresh pasture.

Much as it pains me to say this out loud, Simmental/Angus crosses may not be that bad : )

It was a little brisk when this guy arrived in early spring!

 Here's the difference between a high percentage Simmental heifer ( on the left), and a high percentage Angus heifer (on the right). My husband just loves the one on the left, while my dad immediately commented on how much he liked the nice head on the one on the right.

 This is most likely an AI calf. My husband AI's his heifers and some of his cows each year.

As you can see, it turned out to be a great grass year in western S.D.

 

 

 

 Which also means an excellent milk year!

 These cows are mostly our first calf heifers and coming three's, in other words the young mothers. They're going to make a positive impact on the cowherd based on the number raising calves like this one. That's baby on the left and momma on the right. Oh, and one of my Wyoming transplants sporting a pink ear tag.

Here are the mothers, or "The Beef Council" as one lady commented on my Double H Facebook page. Hope you've enjoyed a good grass year in your area as well!

Sorting pairs

All photos courtesy of Mama H, who was riding the 4-wheeler and photographing this task for me to share on here : )

 

 

We sorted and shipped the last two loads of pairs to summer pasture yesterday. What always precedes shipping pairs is the task of sorting pairs, and we did that on Saturday. Since these were the last two loads, we gathered the entire pasture, which is 3 miles long and 1/5 miles wide, and sorted everything.

Sorting pairs means sorting out each cow with her baby, and putting them somewhere else. We usually put them through a gate into a new pasture. One pair is one cow and calf that are mother and child. The idea behind sorting pairs is that by doing it successfully you will have everyone matched up when you load them on the trucks headed to summer pasture. It's 200 miles to our summer pasture, and if the wrong cow or calf ends up 200 miles from home, it's a big task to get them matched back up, and you might not get it accomplished. You don't just gather a bunch of cows and calves that you haven't sorted out of a big pasture, load them up and ship them out.

We also sort out any calves that haven't been branded yet, and make sure they don't make the trip. The calves are usually too small still, and you don't want to ship a slick calf 200 miles away without any way for someone to know who it belongs to. He could get lost or stolen very easily.

While we make every effort to get this perfect, it doesn't always happen that way. Cows are like people in that some are super good mothers and you can tell right away which calf is hers. Others still aren't sure they even have a kid "at home", and really don't care what he does, who he hangs out with or what time he gets home. But, we do our best, and it's rare to have a mismatched pair. It's the second type that causes us to scratch our heads sometimes, but we have a trick up our sleeves for them that I'll cover later in the post.

 We started with the gather, which went relatively fast with a 4-wheeler, motorcycle, and three people horseback. The motorized people can do the big circle and check the far corners, and the people horseback can gather the rougher areas of the pasture and start trailing everything to the south end. We really like to use a combination of the two on our place for those reasons.

 Here are those of us horseback, which included my brother's girlfriend, my dad and myself. We had a nice, cool day with a roaring wind for the job. A lot of the time we sort pairs with just two people horseback, or three of us horseback and one person on a 4-wheeler. My brother's girlfriend was a nice added bonus on this day.

 When we reached the south end we stopped the cows on one of two big flats along the fence line near a gate. We hold them in a fairly loose bunch, not letting any get away but providing enough room they can (hopefully) keep their calf with them. This is my brother guarding the back side of the bunch.

Here are my dad and I on the front side, both guarding the gate and sorting pairs. My brother's girlfriend is just to the left of the photo, preventing the cows from heading back north across the pasture instead of through the open gate, into a new pasture without anything in it before we started sorting.

 

 

Above is my dad making a sweep, where he rides a little way into the herd, turns and sweeps the cows out and toward the gate. This will usually result in those that are paired trailing out.

 Here I am behind him. On this pass we only got one. You can see how she is trailing out and the others that aren't paired have stopped to look for their calf or mom.

Here's a bigger group, four pair at once this time. We also try to do this in a calm fashion. If you go super fast and get everything stirred up, pretty soon no one can find their calf, everyone is upset, and it doesn't go well at all. It's a lot easier on the livestock and us if do things at a slower pace, plus it's faster when you look at the time it took to complete the entire task.

 You never want to let anyone through the gate unless you're sure they belong together. But, sometimes things happen, like a calf misses the gate and goes back down the wrong side of the fence. In that case you have to go get the cow and bring her back to get her calf again. That's what happened here.

 She knew she didn't have her calf, and jogged right back through the gate to go gather him up. It doesn't always go like this. Sometimes the cow just decides to leave, and you have to convince her to come back. That's when you want to be on a good horse.

But this was a good cow. Dad had her calf stopped, and she mooed at him and off they went again, together.

 Everyone has to work well together for a sorting to go well - both horses and people. This is a more technical ranch job in my opinion. Between keeping the cows grouped, but not too tight, making sure only pairs go through the gate, keeping a count on how many pairs you've sorted, being calm but able to run down a cow who has suddenly decided she's had enough and is leaving, then slowing right back down and go back to sorting, and being able to move to wherever you're needed to accomplish all these things in tandem requires everyone work together.

 Both made it through the gate the second time.

 Then, when we get toward the end, and down to those cows who don't have a clue or care in the world, we unleash "The Crackin." Ok, just kidding, his name is Mister, and this is him and my sister sitting in a low spot. Her job while sorting is to hold him on a leash until he's needed. Sometimes she sits on the 4-wheeler with him, but this was her spot of choice on Saturday.
If you're a mom, and you're in the grocery store, and there's a creepy, dirty guy that keeps eyeing you and your kids, you probably have them all lined up, accounted for and in your sight. Mister is the creepy dirty guy to a bunch of mother cows. He instills bellering, slobbering, chasing after him, and typically a much increased awareness of where a cow's calf is. The cows that don't care are usually much less dramatic in their response to him compared to the cows that do care, much like there are usually still a few screaming kids reaching by the creepy guy to get their favorite sugared cereal while the mom aimlessly looks at pop tarts across the aisle. But he still has some impact, enough on this day.
He helped convince the last few, at least for a few minutes at least, that junior wasn't yet of an age where he could do as he pleased and we got them sorted and through the gate.

When the last few went through the gate, we convened for a brief meeting of how many additional pairs we needed from the next pasture to get the correct number to fill our loads, trailed the slick calves and their moms to where they belonged, and continued on with our day.
Sorting pairs with his family has always been one of my dad's favorite jobs. There are big blow ups (with cows) and mad chases that last a matter of seconds, smooth cuts to bring out a big group that's paired, satisfying cuts and dodges on a horse that finally got it figured out, and a good feeling of having accomplished the task together as a family.

Week of Bloopers

 Has it been one of those weeks for anyone else? Case in point - an hour ago I went out to the garage to see if there was any cranberry juice to be found,  so that I could have a cranberry vodka because it's been one of those weeks. But, upon walking out the door I realized the burning pile of paper was getting away, and spent an hour shoveling dirt and monitoring the flames. Oh, I did eventually check for juice too, and my sister drank it all.
So, while waiting to see if I need to do any more fire monitoring prior to showering, and praying nothing else happens, I thought I would share some calf photography bloopers with you from the last week or so - they seem fitting this evening. I typically delete these as I find them, so I'll be short a couple examples, but have enough to hopefully give everyone a chuckle for the weekend!
Just as with any form of photography, not every shot is perfect. In fact, I typically average a handful of what I would consider usable photos from every batch I take.

There are the cases of closed eyes.

 and squinty eyes.

 Lots of tongues sticking out, particularly when it's breakfast time.

Focusing on the grass near the calf's butt instead of its face, and another tongue.

Really messing up the focus. This has happened a lot lately as I have been working on improving my usage of depth of field.

Very over exposed objects, especially baldy calves in the snow.

 The occasional nose/head/foot/tail getting chopped off

 The look of death when the subject doesn't want to pose anymore.

 

 

Followed by inappropriate behavior.
There are also lots of images catching someone going to the bathroom, with no consideration for the photo being taken. Infant photographers have nothing when it comes to the peeing thing compared to a pasture full of baby calves.
The other point I would like to make is that even after years of taking cattle pictures, there is still a learning curve, every day, and I do not always get the shot I want to turn out "right." Some days it seems like they all look beautiful, and other days I wonder what possessed me to even take a photo when I look at it on the computer. Then there is the time spent looking at other photographer's work,which sometimes makes me pat myself on the back, and sometimes makes me want to buy all their work, hang it on my wall, then throw my camera away.
One such break spent looking at another person's work a couple weeks ago is what made me realize that I could really improve how I approached a photo from a depth of field perspective. I have gotten into the habit of adjusting my f-stop to reach the right exposure, and that was resulting in some photos not looking the way I wanted them to.
So, I have been consciously working to adjust how I work things in manual mode to get photos the way I want them, without always adjusting the f-stop. This is really just the latest in what is a continual pursuit to improve at something I love to do. Below is one non-blooper photo where it all came together.

 

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Celebrating Earth Day

It's Earth Day, where we celebrate our planet and participate in activities to help keep her sustainable and healthy.
I was reading up on Earth Day this morning, and found that in 1970, Earth Day helped Democrats and Republicans form an alignment to get the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Act passed in Congress, which was somewhat of a letdown for me.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all about protecting and improving our planet. My lifestyle and job depend fully upon my ability to do so. I also love that those who do not live in an area or have a job that allows them to improve earth daily are willing to help make a difference on this day. That's wonderful, and it's amazing to see what people can accomplish, even in the most urban areas, when they set their minds to making the earth better!
The part that bothers me is that so many people associated with the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, and numerous other supposedly helpful acts, laws and causes for the environment hate me, my neighbors, and my lifestyle. They jump on the bandwagon of one day of physically helping earth out, then spend the rest of their year negating everything those in my profession do that is also helping and improving the earth.
This becomes particularly frustrating on months like this one, where everyone I know has spent countless hours dealing with inclement weather, working tirelessly to ensure the health of their livestock, planned ahead and reduced numbers to make sure the land and ecosystems on that land are cared for, even if it's another drought year. When a few blog comments pop up damning me and my profession in the midst of all that, with no justification beyond stating that I am in the wrong because of what I am and how I make my living, my good humor takes a dive.
This is because these less than fun days on America's privately owned lands are the Earth Days that make the most difference, be it good or bad, and we aim to make every single one good. We take our responsibility of being stewards of the land to the extreme, regardless of weather, breakdowns, health or personal sacrifice. We set a standard based on our children and grandparents, rooted in generations of work and personal responsibility, paid for in sweat equity.
And, perhaps most irritating to those who hate us - we do what we know is right for the land without fail, regardless of the monetary, social or personal loss. Even more frustrating to them is that we don't care about that "loss," because to us the permanent gain of improving the environment far outweighs any temporary gain that may be found through their misguided options.
While today's official Earth Day itself is fun, and a wonderful opportunity to help make a difference, it's one of 365 celebrated and practiced by farmers and ranchers every year. We love our big and little pieces of earth beyond measure, and care for them accordingly.

Fun in the sun

 The calves felt great after our blizzard. These are just a few of the photos I got of them fighting, playing, running and jumping.

Let's play.

 Then there was this guy...

 So happy and excited!

 

 

 All together now.

 Bored.

 Yippee!

 Why are you no fun?

Irresponsible kids! I am not with them.

I'm linking this post up with The View From Right Here's Weekly Top Shot linky party. Check her and all the participants out!