Just Alpacas
These Alpacas are in a field a few miles from where I live but they are well hidden and I just spotted them as I drove past. Amazed I hadn’t noticed them before but these days I never leave home without my photography eyes!
I took a few snaps on Saturday but it was raining – much needed down here but not great for photos so I went back yesterday ( Sunday ) for another look.
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I love the hair on the one to the left of the picture below
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Drop by again tomorrow and I’ll show you more close-ups of some of their lovely faces
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Addendum – a few hours after posting – Green Shepherdess has just put me straight (see her comment below – thanks 😀 ) I had titled this Just llamas but they are in fact Alpacas. Told you this blog was educational didn’t I 😉
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The first one just made me giggle out loud with it’s uneven eyes and extreme underbite! These are so much fun! I’m sure you know the poem about “the one-l lama”, right?
NO ?? and as you’ll see I’ve changed the post to Alpacas because apparently that’s what they are 🙂
Okay, so I’ve just educated myself on the difference between alpacas and llamas. Llamas are larger, with curved ears (banana-shaped), more solitary and not kept exclusively for their soft hair, although they do have an underlayer that’s about as soft as the alpaca’s. They also come with a silly poem by Ogden Nash that I’ve known since childhood: “The one-l lama, he’s a priest; the two-l llama, he’s a beast; and I will bet a silk pajama there isn’t any three-l lllama.”
Those are actually Alpacas, a smaller cousin to the Llama; most of the ones you photographed are the Huacaya variety, but the one on the left with the corded coat is a Suri.
Alpaca people love to share about their animals, I bet you could knock on their door to ask more about them. They are very gentle animals 🙂
Oh thank you so much for telling me Green Shepherdess 😀 I will change the title .. I don’t know where the door is for this field. It isn’t obvious who owns them ..
Ha, I was just wondering whether to say these were alpacas rather than Llamas, but I didn’t want you to hate me 🙂 They are lovely pictures though 🙂
Oh you must tell me when I’m making mistakes Caroline or I’ll never learn anything!
Oh dear Helen, in the first one, she doesn’t seem friendly… 🙂 They are lovely you captured amazing photographs. Thank you, have a nice day, with my love, nia
That’s just the way their mouths are Nia.. don’t think it was being unfriendly 🙂
I am glad to hear this dear Helen, I am learning more with your photographs. The next one is amazing too.. Fascinated me. Thank you, with my love, nia
Thankyou Nia.. I will try hard to keep you fascinated 🙂
Seems it is going to be like that, I am so happy for this. You are welcome and Thanks dear Helen, with my love, nia
They are so intense looking, like they are very interested in you. Such characters!
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That describes them very well Karen. They do look at you as though they are fascinated.. quite disconcerting.
Photogenic criitters ain’t they?
My Mother, (who I must point out is demented), pointed to some of these fellows we passed on a country drive last year.. She said “Look! Lambs with long necks”…….It made her day…
So for me that’s what they will always be…..
I agree with your mother Stuart, they are just like lambs with long necks 😀
Just LOVE these! And they DO look like lambs/sheep with long necks. Coming from a land where sheep outnumber the humans 10-1, it’s a bit disconcerting;-)
Yes I can imagine TS .. stretched necks are a bit disconcerting !
Superb photos. Love the selective focussing.
Thank you so much for picking up on that David.. I deliberately shot from quite a long way off to improve the blurring of the background. (I’m sure there’s a fancy name for this..shallow depth of field or summat ??!! )
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They look a bit like big sheep with woolly legs and long necks. Kind of cuddly as well. Nice.
I agree they do Marleen… !
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These are nice pictures, Helen, I like these.
Top one is good. Your eye enters the shot on the left, sees the out of focus one and then runs slap bang into the incredible face of the one on the right – wonderful! You could easily crop quite a bit off the bottom and a little off the top too.
2nd down: nice shot! Not sure if grass line at top of shot needs to be horizontal??????
3rd down – >>>very nice shot but you need to brighten the black face of the left hand one just a little bit. Removing the bottom half of the picture would bring more emphasis onto the wonderful faces.
4th down – again very nice shot. You could remove / make more diffuse the prominent pole at the top. Again needs just a little bit more brightness in the black face, if possible. Being radical, you could crop out the pole and every thing to the right of it to give an intriguing, two-necked portrait shot – go on, be bold!!!
Bottom one – not bad; good choice of format.
Adrian
Glad for your input Adrian and it was interesting for me to look at these again.
1 – Agree with cropping bit off the top but not the bottom..wanted to show the whole Alpaca in the background as well as the length of the animals neck!.
2 – You are absolutely right.. better with straight horizon. Attention to detail has been one of the learning curves for me since I started this blog.
3 – Agree cropping off the bottom works well.. Had alrerady lightened quite a lot.. Haven’t worked out how to just lighten the dark face without lightening the rest of the photo too much!!
4 – Could take out the pole now I know how to use the healing brush in PS !! As for the 2 headed comment that’s what I was thinking when I took the photo and I tried it in post processing but it just didn’t look good to me 🙂
Glad that my thoughts are useful! >>>>>>> yes, the detail, the whole detail, and nothing but the detail!!!
And talking of detail >>> in the moment just before you take a picture – assuming you have the time of course – try to get into the habit of casting your eyes around the periphery of the frame to make sure that nothing annoying or extraneous to the composition is lurking there, eg a head, a piece of rubbish, a contrail.
Re lightening the sheeps’ faces, I don’t know much about Photoshop but there ought to be some method of delineating an area of the photo that you want to do things to – ie rather than doing them to the whole picture. In NX2, I can draw a line around the area using the mouse and then do to that area – >>>OR do to all BUT that area – anything I want eg lightening, darkening, sharpening etc etc. Adrian
I’ve got VeiwNX2 Adrian but I don’t think that’s what you mean is it?
No, Helen, View NX2 is the image viewer that comes free with most if not all Nikon cameras – you can’t do vast amounts with it in terms of picture manipulation. Capture NX2 is £130 from Warehouse Express – and this is Nikon’s equivalent to Photoshop, it facilitates far reaching image editing – and its specifically tailored for Nikon cameras. I use it for initial manipulation of all my pictures – Levels and curves, sharpness, and cropping – and for everything with the colour shots. Adrian
OPh right… well I find NX2 along with Photoshop 7 ( which was given to me) do pretty much all I think I need…or will do when I’ve got my head round it all in a year or two!! You may have read in one of my other posts that I’ve started shooting in Raw (NEF files) what fun!!
Yes, NX2 wih Photoshop will be fine. And YES!!! >>> NEFs are the way to go – I think Photoshop comes with Adobe Camera Raw which you can use to convert your NEFs to files that Photoshop can assault. NEF and RAW in general far better starting points for manipulation than jpegs or tiffs. Any problems with RAW conversion, let me know. Adrian
Thanks Adrian 🙂