A few years back, the Irish Farmers Journal published a Scottish edition and, under editor John Sleigh, I was commissioned to produce a weekly cover image alongside feature photography.
This frame comes from a particularly enjoyable afternoon photographing shearer Dougie Steel at work on a farm near Kippen. It was a warm, bright day and I had free rein to move around the team – two shearers and the farmer doing wool handling. Never one to make life easy for myself, I chose to shoot on shallow depth prime lenses and added a touch of on-camera flash for good measure. It slowed things down slightly—mainly due to recycling times—but gave the images a real sense of pop and helped pull out the incredible detail that was everywhere.
Left to get on with it (as long as I stayed out of the way), I spent a good few hours working alongside them and came away with a really diverse set of images. I knew only one would make it into print, but with that level of access it would’ve been foolish not to make the most of it.
I particularly like this frame of the farmer handling a fleece – he was quick on his feet and not the easiest to keep up with, but in this image you can almost feel the pace… and maybe even smell the lanolin and hard work in the air.
