The Importance of a Rally

Raise your hand if you were a huge Lamb Chop fan as a child, had all the merch, and more stuffed lambs than mattress space for sleeping. Both of my hands are way up, (you?) so safe to say my love of lambs comes from way back, and this year I had the opportunity to go meet and photograph lambs and sheep, face-to-face, for the first time, and it was everything, and I mean everything, but these photos and that moment almost didn’t happen.

An emergency dental procedure two days before my scheduled farm tour had me feeling so rough, that the morning of the tour I told my sister I couldn’t go and we’d need to cancel, I just didn’t have it in me. I had crossed an ocean for this tour and was devastated the words had even come out of my mouth, but there it was.

My sister said all the things to try and get me to change my mind, offering creative solutions and avenues so that I wouldn’t miss this moment, but I just couldn’t see my way to making a three-hour journey to the countryside. Then she said, are you sure you want to go back home without a single picture of a lamb? That did it.

Some.thing.snapped.

I threw the covers back, jumped out of bed and said, we’re leaving in five. We had a 10-minute buffer to catch the next tube to make all the other connections to the farm. I had decided to rally.

And in the decision to rally a cherished photo gallery was born. Rallying is part of living, but I like to think about how it interacts with creativity. In the simple choice of rallying, I opened up room for creativity and being present. I chose to show up, as is, in order to have the experience that I wanted to have, but that also meant I surrendered my game plan and expectations of what I thought those photos would be.

I was physically drained and could not carry gear so I simplified my setup: one camera, one light(ish) lens, natural light. I now had limited time so I reimagined my concept: shoot what it felt like to be with the lambs instead of shooting for specific vignettes.

Setup for this blessed occasion: R5, Canon 85mm, 2.0 macro

As photographers, so much is out of our control, looking at you weather, but rallying is the art of showing up for all the variability so that you can have the opportunity to shoot a gallery you never imagined.

There are no words to describe that evening spent among the sheep and lambs, we saw a lamb being born (epic). And to think I was just going to stay home.