You know that thing they say about kids and animals?
…
Yeah, that’s the one.
It’s true. Mostly. I mean, I’ve had my fair share of two-year-olds tear up a studio – literally in one instance where backing paper was involved. It wasn’t pretty. It got worse when he got hold of a €8,000 camera and poked his fingers inside to see if anything in the mirror chamber would be his friend.
So I was a little anxious when we set out last Friday to shoot some pack shots at Ardsallagh goat’s farm, where Jane Murphy keeps her herd that produces outstanding cheese and milk. The brief was to shoot a picture of her daughter Siobhan holding a baby goat. The plan was to echo the farm’s current label, which is a drawing of Siobhan when she was a little girl holding a kid. Siobhan is grown up now, so she was never going to be the issue. My concern was working with a bunch of kid goats.
Turns out the kids weren’t the problem. Give them a belly full of milk before the shoot and you own them.
The shots of Siobhan and a series of kids went really smoothly. It was afterwards that the trouble started.
Behaving like a professional
(c) Roger Overall 2008 – All Rights Reserved
The agency designing the new labels wanted a back-up photograph of some of Jane’s goats and we decided to get a group into a field so that the background would give the open air feel we wanted. The goats, though, were perfectly happy to stay in their barn. I’ve seen kitten litters more co-operative.
It took several attempts to get a half-dozen of them out of the barn and another two attempts to herd them up to the field. Even when we got them there, most of the goats decided that their rear-ends would make for a great picture. You can’t reason with a goat that its bum is not going to sell cheese. It doesn’t care.
Eventually, though, we got some suitable shots. Actually, the agency was thrilled with the pictures. I can’t wait to see the finished label in the supermarkets.
Kidding Around
(At least they’re facing the right way)
(c) Roger Overall 2008 – All Rights Reserved
