There is always a number of pics that are in the collection that don't make it to be seen by the client, or anybody for that matter, if you are on a shoot. Maybe you are wandering around doing a bit of a reconnoitre for some interesting angles or sun in the morning vs sun in the afternoon.
So thought i'd throw some pics together for you ... and their stories.
This little fella above, his name is Dog, lived on a farm that was a B&B, and when the B&B was quiet and just his owners were on site, they would let him out of his very cute little home and he would cruise around with the dogs, go for walks with the owners, basically he was one of the lads. Loved a scratch under the chin and listened just like all the dogs. Would sit and lie down and occasionally would give you a hi-five. A real character.
I was desperately trying to photograph the smallest flowers I had ever seen - there was a fairly strong wind and I couldn't catch a nice framing of them, they were just blurring. Then out of the blue while I was focusing on the flowers you see in the pic a 'Plain Tiger' or 'African Monarch' butterfly landed on the flowers the wind halted for a couple of seconds and I managed to to snap a couple of shots off. Little miracles, I say. Interesting fact about the Monarch - he is toxic to eat, cause he eats something called 'Milkweed' which has a poisonous milky sap. So other butterflies actually mimic the Monarch's colourings in order to enhance survival.
This dude is one of the dogs I was talking about earlier. Man he used to drive me crazy. His name was Manfred or something like that .. I can't quite remember. Anyway he was young and wild and very cool, but he was alot. There was this big fountain and thought it would be interesting to get a shot across the water. Well, Manfred had other ideas. "Pick me! Pick me".
I seem to remember her name was Veronica, somehow the Archie comics were involved. Everybody on the farm had names, and everybody enjoyed human contact and tons of attention. Veronica however was tricky, if you showed the slightest fear or just moved a little to quickly she would just spit in your face, stinky, gooey gunk. Yeah, Veronica, she took a while to get to know. So cute but.
This was a spot in the poplar forest and no one actually knows who built it or why it was there. All the buildings were masoned from sandstone and quarried it off the property. Those doors are at least 1,5 metres wide. Whats that in feet - about 5 feet. You can see the sandstone pillars, but has been adjusted and used over the years for all sorts of things. Weddings, fashion photo shoots, remembrances ... I think my favourite was when they held a music festival on the farm and there were different music genre's on different parts of the farm. This spot had a long bar in front with black light shinning up into the trees. Niiice!
