Thursday, November 04, 2010

Pygmy goat sitting

click photo to enlarge
As well as wielding wallpaper and paintbrushes in recent days we are also doing a spot of pygmy goat sitting. Now, lest anyone thinks this is an act of unspeakable cruelty, let me expain that we are simply looking after our friends' herd of pygmy goats during their brief absence. So, in the spirit of "feeding the blog" I took my camera along when we went to "hay up" the sheds. Now there are those who are smitten by the looks, habits and nature of these diminutive ruminants. I'm not one of those people. After all, as I have sometimes been known to say to my friends, there has to be a reason why the Devil is often depicted with goat features. However, I do pride myself on an ability to find a photograph in just about anything, and it wasn't difficult in this case.

The best of my shots is this one, taken just after I'd loaded the hay racks. However, a new camera, my mind on other things, and a shortage of images for posting due to my DIY purdah, led me to take the shot without checking the aperture. I wouldn't have chosen f9 for this shot, and I wouldn't have chosen 1/20 second either, especially with moving subjects. But, that notwithstanding, I'm not too displeased with the outcome. What made the subject more difficult than it might have been was the low light level but more especially the white patch on the central goat, and I had to dial in a bit of negative EV to control that.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f9
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 800
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On