.png)
We are not professional photographers but we have come to realize that when you are farming you must wear many different hats. When you are trying to sell animals you will need some pictures to advertise what you have available. Taking pictures, wait let me clarify, taking good pictures of your animals matter. Have you ever scrolled through any platform looking for animals for sale? You will probably noticed that the ones that catch your attention the most have good quality pictures.
By quality I do not mean that you need a high-tech camera. Yes, it does help to have a good camera but that is not absolutely necessary. In general most phone cameras will do just fine. We just use our phone cameras.
Lighting. Like we stated we are not professional so we do not have any expertise tips on lighting. But lighting is important. Good natural light is helpful.
The pose also matters. Learn what pose is the best for what ever animals you are taking pictures of and set them up. But remember that animals have a mind of their own and will not always sit still. Sometimes their natural relaxed self, out in a pasture grazing will be a nice enough pose. It depends. Show animals should definitely be posed correctly. For regular farm animals it is not quite as important to have them posed correctly. Just a good picture of them will work.
The background matters. You do not want a bunch of junk in the background. It is not very professional to take your pictures in say the muddy manure filled paddock. If that is all you have to work with then do your best to get the animals along the fence so that the background is the fence and what is beyond the fence as long as that is better then the muddy pasture. Smaller animals like our rabbits we can take to different spots to take picture of them. Large animals like cattle are harder to do that unless they are halter broke.
It will take time and lots of pictures. Once you have your background in place you can start taking pictures. Take a lot of them it will help you later then you are trying to pick out good ones for your advertisement. No, we do not always get good pictures of each animals but we do our best. And sometimes you just have to use what you got. You cannot spend all day trying to get pictures of one animals. That is just not how farming works.
Different angles. People also like pictures of the animals from different angles. Front, back each side and any special trait they have or important feature they have.
The date is also important to note in pictures. When we sold our breeding buck goat (because we got a different one for new blood lines) we specifically stated that the pictures were from right after breeding season. He looked good but he was a little slim because bucks normally lose a little weight during breeding season.
If you have several animals that look similar it would be a good idea to edit the photo to put their ID number on it so you know which one it is if someone asks. Our goats have ear tags so we will make sure their ear tag shows in the picture if we have goats that look similar. Our baby bunnies can be hard to keep track of sometimes. We change the background for different bunnies to help us know who is who.
Here is a little video of us taking pictures of some of our bunnies. This is how we do it maybe you will get some ideas or feel free to tell us how you take your animal's photos for marketing.
Comments