Lab 10: Maple Line Farm

I waited on the dust road for the tour guide to appear, and after 15 minutes he finally arrived. I wanted to take pictures with my camera but I unfortunately left it in the dorm. Rich West, the tour guide, explained that the farm has been around for 105 years planting tobacco and vegetable until 25 years ago where it moved away from that business and into the dairy farming.

The registered Jersey cows are rich in butterfat which helps makes their products more creamy. The demand for their milk is so high that they must rent out land nearby to supply their demand. The farm not only produces milk in different flavors but they also make heavy cream, and 5% of their business is selling beef.

The 10 employees there must work through 125 acres of land and an extra 60 acres that they rented from neighboring land. Each day the cows are milked twice a day at 8am and then at 3pm. Those 4 1/2 year old cows are pleasant to be with, the calf I was playing with kept on sucking on my finger as if it was a teat.

I could not run back to my dorm to get my camera, but I did bring back a quart of milk. I saw this project online that I wanted to try, it's making a light tent. So the milk bottle will be my subject. I had to substitute the light bulb with a florescent one which gave the picture the orange tint. I made this project so that I could experiment with lighting. If I photoshop the picture I could get the colored tint to disappear but it would also wash out the current white that appears in the photo. The overexposure would make the text on the bottle hard to see. When I redo this photoshop I have to replace the bulb but I also have to alight the paper to better hide the brown box lining on the corner. I will also have to get the t-shirt to be fitted around the box so that there aren't any wrinkes/waves in the photo.

Wild Horses in a Field of Wildflowers

At the Hadley Barn there are also horses, but I dont't usually hang out there. So I picked this photo because Mr. Gehman has captured something wonderful. He shows horses running in a field of flowers, below the horses feet lays wildflowers that seem to stretch for miles. The horses' hair is flying in the wind, in this family scene. I say family scene because there is a fowl, baby horse, in the scene along with a masculine black stallion larger then both the horses. You can also see the deep blue in the sky without a puff of cloud floating around.

Solace as Surprise Creek

Pictures

Close-Up of a Chicken

Michael Calderon took a close-up of a chicken. If you notice the background the other chickens are blurred and the edges of the background chicken are soften, this puts the audiences' attention to the chicken up front. This image is not a soft focus because the edges of the subject's feather is smooth while the detail of the body is still detailed.

Woman With Cow

Sarah Leen took this shot to express how many barrel of fuel it takes to raise a steer. It takes 283 gallons of oil to raise this 1,250 pounds of a beast.

Pig and Piglet, Africa

Amanda Kopp took this great photo of a piglet kissing her mother.

Lab 8: Foxbard Farm

Mr. John Payne gave the group a tour of the Foxbard Farm. The farm has been around since the 1700's which was bought by John Payne's father of 1,150 acres of land, at the time it was a tabacco farm but it wasn't until 1943 that the owner switched over to be a dairy farm, filling their pastures with milking short-horns. After passing away Payne's son, John, took ownership of his father's land in 1998 and ever since then the farm has been run by John. Currently the farm has 100 - 130 heads of cows, most of them were bred naturally.

These pictures were shot with my 1.8 mega pixel camera. Now a days, a regular point-and-shoot camera has about 7.1 mega pixel. Mega pixels are one of the features to look for when purchasing a camera. The mega pixels indicate how much pixels are in a inch of a photo. Since my camera has such a low resolution of 1.8 mega pixel, you can notice that blocks are used to make up the photo. The higher the mega pixel the smoother and crisp the image comes out to be and no amount of photoshopping can make this photo look like it was taken from a 7.1 mega pixel camera.

Sources: The Pixels Underneath Your Photo

Lab 7: Hadley Farm

This was taken during my Livestock Classics class competition. I was in the sheep group, and my sheep's name was Lambchops. This photo is not mine but the photographer did a pretty good job at taking this picture. She had us in a tight squeeze to fit into the view of the lens and the people positioning is good. I like that the right side of the picture is packed with people and going to the left the amount of people narrow down and trails off with a sheep. The faces are clear in the picture but it could use some photoshopping because it looks dreary. It was a cloudy day so there wasn't much sun, but with a little help of photoshop I would edit the brightness of the image and add some contrast so the colors would not wash out.

Lab 6: Before and After Diemand Farm (Poultry)

Before After

The before picture of this sign was depressing as its overall color was gray and a little bland might I add. So what I did was made the picture warmer by allowing the yellow (foliage) to be more yellow and I made the photo a brighter as well as adjusting the contrast to have the tree's branches pop up more.

The lighting in this barn was not that great even with the natural lighting of the sun coming into the shed, so I adjusted the brightness to have the sun reflect off of the girl's hair on the left of the after picture.

This picture required a little more than just adjustment in brightness and contrast. I applied a layer, where I adjusted the subject (the chick) to be brighter and sharper and then I applied a blur to the background so that the subject would pop up more.

This picture did not require much work as the camera had a soft focus which means that the picture is blurry but still maintaining it's sharp edges. All the picture needed was brightness.

I did not really know what to do with the picture because I thought it was pretty good. I just played around, by sharpening the dog's eye to intensify what the dog was looking at.

Not must here, soft focus, and an adjustment in contrast.

I was at a Chicken/Turkey Farm. For class we learned how chickens were slaughtered, but I wont go into that since I have these pictures up. These chickens were in the pen chirping and running away from our hands but eventually we would catch one. The farm sold their cracked eggs up front but they were still good and cheap. They also sold chicken potpie, chicken salad, chicken sandwich, along with turkey potpie, turkey dinner, everything chicken and turkey fresh from the farm.

Lab 5: Intro to Poultry (Egg Quality)

The image was created by jjwiseman. The class had an indoor lab so there was not any animals we got to see. I picked this image to talk about egg quality but I really picked it because I liked how jjwiseman put the eggs side by side along, with an above shot and a side shot. You can clearly see how wide the egg stretch but on the side you can see how tall the yoke is along the the egg whites still clinging onto the sides of the yoke; when you compare egg AA wih egg B.

There is a vintage old look to these photos as well. The coloring isn't as rich and the white looks faded with some graining spots all over.

Lab 4: Parson's Farm (Swine & Sheep)

Parson's Farm specialize in artificially bred pigs and sheep. These farm raised animals are fed with a special grain feed of protein, but the piglets gets their own food from their mother's teats. Piglets are very dominate they do not share the mother's teat with anyone and they will not drink from any other teat except their very own. Pigs are fierce animals to come across, their odor can do some damage to a person's nose. I was at the pig farm for quite some time and the smell was fowl enough to get me nauseated. The pigs are well cared for and all but the odor is just something that can't be treated.

These pictures were taken at the Hadley Barn, when the class was doing castrations *fun! I did not adjust the last 3 pictures below because I thought the images were good as they are so I'll talk about the camera angle. As for the 2 pictures above I had to do some editing. I found the background distracting because Serena's face is a little distracting and stealing some attention from Kayleigh, the one holding the piglet in the arm.



I wanted the audience to experience what I was feeling when the piglets were staring at me. I took this shot with the piglet's eye in mind. I did not have the eye positioned in the center of the photo because I was following the Rule of Thirds which is a rule to have a subject's eye lie in the intersecting points of this image. I am still a amateur in the art of photography but the point is to have the eye to be positioned near the point of intersection.


There was not any rules I was following for this one just put my camera in front of the pigs. I like how there is a wall on one side and on the other it's free, there's also a pig facing that direction as well. But mostly I like how the piglet just stares at at the looking of the photo.


The pigs are on one another, but it's basically the same angle as the picture above. Except I kept the light to contrast the dark. When you look at the picture from top to bottom the light exposure drops and gets darker at the bottom.

Lab 3: Animal Health

Animal healthy is very important especially if it is being used as food. Some diseases or infection can be zoonotic, meaning it can be transferred from animal to human. None of the sheep in the picture was diseased, but they were stressed and tired which could lead to sickness. These sheep were handled with the utmost care, but putting them in new environment is very frightening. Aside from that I wanted to talk about how well this picture was taken. The people were alighted in a straight light but the cameraman made it look like we were alighted diagonally. In this angle you can see the ewe's nicelly finished coat of wool and fully washed coat of white. But some improvements could help to make the photo better, like giving the person on the right some more space so not to seem like she's about to be cut out and there is enough space because to the right there is some emptiness that can be best be utilized by doing such.

Lab 2: Beef Cows (Brood Cows and Calf Management)

During spring break, I went to a slaughter house in Pennsylvania for my Artificial Insemination class. The photo was taken by my professor, and although he's a great teacher and knowledgeable in animals he took a very shoddy picture. The faces in this picture are hard to see and the positioning is a little tilted. If I was taking this shot I would have moved closer to the group and used some sort of point of reference to make sure that the image was not so tilted.

Lab 1: Lambing

Feb 7, 2009:
Tonight I will be at the Hadley barn, watching over the ewes. Everyone in ANISCI103 has to spend at least one night with the lambs. The purpose of this lab is to show students the parturition of a ewe lambing, and to watch out for signs of breech births, so to prevent any lambs from suffocation while still in the ewe’s placenta.

Postpartum
At the barn I am required to make sure certain things happen after the lambing. During the parturition my group must call a TA about the lambing, so that the TA can come up to assist us in caring for lambs. The navel of the ewe is dipped in 7% iodine solution. Within an hour of birth, the lambs must nurse, because it is essential the lamb gets something to eat and that the mother has accepted the lamb as her own or else the mother will not allow the lamb to get nourishment from her teat.

After the parturition, the placenta of the ewe should drop after a few hours. Once the placenta falls, it must be disposed of for sanitary reasons. The time and date of the birth is recorded to help keep track of how old the lambs are.

Cameras @ Lab

I brought my Sony Cybershot DSC-W90 with me while moving onto campus. I took some awesome shots with this camera the year before and I'm hoping I'll capture some interesting shots now that I'm in college.

This camera in terms of specs is not spectacular but overall it gets the job done. For me I like to think that there are 3 types of cameras that are designed for Snapshooter, Serious Shooter, and the In-Between.

My W90 is designed for Snapshooters, people who want a camera for portability reasons while getting decent picture quality when printing from a personal printer at home; the picture quality is pretty good within 8x10 inches but from my camera experience the W90 is only good at printing within 4x6 inches because the images would start to get grainy when printing any larger. This type of camera has a automatic exposure feature which allows the camera to adjust to the lighting, a great feature for those on the go. (These cameras should cost under $275)

The Serious Shooter wants to take full advantage of their camera, portability is not as important as picture quality. The camera has adjustable features to enhance certain quality of an image, and the picture prints are superb even when printing photos larger then 8x10 inches. These cameras has adjustable lenses and other accessories that put the user in control and not the camera. I want to get the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28, which will only cost me an arm and a leg, I thought I add that because I can't wait to use it. (These cameras should cost over $360)

The In-Between shooters are people who look at portability and picture quality but at the same time considering which camera has the best bang for the buck. (The camera prices is up to the buyer usually between $175-$350, which is also my spending limit for any camera.)

Lab 1: Lamb Watch
Lab 2: Beef Cows: Quality Grade
Lab 3: Blood Smears
Lab 4: Parson's Farm: Swine and Sheep
Lab 5: Intro to Poultry: Egg Quality
Lab 6: Diemand FArm: Poultry
Lab 7: Hadley Farm: Farrowing and Piglet Processing

Source: Digital camera buying guide

Animal Welfare vs. Animal Rights

The professor advises the college students to not post pictures of the field trip on Facebook.com as people can construe the pictures as animal cruelty. It was in the afternoon when a group of animal science majors headed down to the Hadley Barn to participate in pig castrations. It is best to castrate the male piglets at a young age or else it would be hard handling a 200 pound swine. When the day was over and the students went back home, it troubled me how people could make a simple medical procedure seem like animal cruelty. What kind of animal rights group would get involved? Are there differences that separate those groups? The answer is yes. The Animal Welfare group and Animal Rights group both care for animals but they differ in how animals are used.

People referring to Animal Welfare and Animal Rights group often time use these names interchangeably even thought these groups have different philosophies, I can see how they can help society raise concern for animal awareness but they can also be an annoyance by restricting people, like myself, from posting animal pictures online.

The two words that differentiate the animal protest groups are “Welfare” and “Rights.” The mission statement for Animal Welfare groups is “to prevent suffering and cruelty to animals.” The word welfare, in Animal Welfare, means the “well-being, happiness of a person or organization” combined with the word animal means that members of Animal Welfare are concerned with the “prosperity and happiness” of animals. Animal Welfare groups believe in people caring for animals and having them as pets. On the other hand, Animal Rights’ groups wants to “to end all human ‘exploitation’ of animals.” The “Right” or “that which is consonant with equity,” as defined by the Oxford English dictionary, means that Animal Rights group considers the lives of every living animal to be their equals. This means that animals should not be used for food but it also means that animals cannot be used as pets. The main difference in philosophy with these two groups is that Animal Rights’ groups do not permit anyone from owning pets, while Animal Welfare is concerned with the animal’s health and prosperity.

The oldest and widely known group associated with Animal Right is PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which was established in 1980 by Alex Pacheco, and Ingrid Newkirk. Currently, PETA has made a request to Ben and Jerry's that they switch over from cow milk to human breast milk. I found this request grotesque because humans have been weaned off of milk at a young age and to return to breast milk for consumption just doesn’t settle right in my mind. However, PETA has also urged Vermont school children to not drink milk, and advised teachers to tear down “got milk” posters. The Daily News reported that PETA protesters have scared off children from drinking milk by passing out trading cards implying that milk drinkers will suffer, “dreaded afflictions [of] a face full of pimples, stomach gaseousness or obesity if they consume milk” (Mahoney, 2000). I point these events out to show how PETA can pressure in groups of people by using tactics that are extremely radical.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, ASPCA, is Animal Welfare’s longest established group since 1866 by Henry Bergh. Recently the ASPCA has filed a lawsuit against the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus. The claim ASPCA made was the circus did not provide sufficient sanitary living conditions for the elephants and reported that “with special clubs or “bull hooks”,” (Stout, 2009) has injured the elephants. The ASPCA has tarnished this circus’s name, by filing this lawsuit for animal cruelty. This claim is probably construed and misinterpreted, I say, because this circus has been running since 1884 and within the 125 years they have probably created guidelines as to how to handle their animals. It is not just guidelines that add to my belief the ASPCA misunderstood the situation, but the fact that purchasing, owning, and the up keeping of an elephant is expensive and if their investments were to be damaged the circus would lose out financially. Although I do admit I am not qualified enough to understand the physiology of an elephant, I do understand, as an animal science major, that medical expenses for a veterinarian specializing in elephants can be costly. The point I want to make is that the circus faces Animal Welfare groups such as the ASPCA, and it this makes it time consuming when lawsuits are being thrown around because of how the truth can be misunderstood.

When I post pictures online, which I believe are safe, I am hesitant sometimes because of how my pictures might be construed as animal endangerment. I want people to enjoy the photos I take, and not interpret them as human cruelty to animals. I understand the purpose of Animal Rights group and Animal Welfare groups as organizations trying to raise awareness of animal but sometimes these groups misinterpret the situation and make a mountain out of a mole hill.




References:

• People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
• The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
• Newman, Chris., “Animal Rights & the future of the Pet Industry” Nov. 13,
• Stout, David., “Suit Challenges Image of Circus Elephants as Willing Performers” Jan. 31, 2009
• New York Times Co.
• Sethna, Zahra., “Stick With Chunky Monkey” Sept. 24, 2008. New York Times Co.,
• Mahoney, Joe,. “PETA: DRINK MILK AND YOU'RE TOAST” Nov. 28, 2000. Daily News
• Arnold, Ron,. “Animal Welfare vs. Animal Rights” 1998. Furcommission.com
• “Know the Difference”

Project Proposal

Medium/Media: Blog
Topic: Animal Photography
Materials: Computer, Camera, Blog Site
Audience: People interested in animals and/or photography
Sources: Guides to taking photographs, photoshopping tutorials, animal science notes
Types of Writing: Personal Experience (first person), critical/aestetic analysis and some contrasting and comparing with works of other artist

Photographs are more than shapes, outlines, and colors, people feel and get a sense of whats behind the photos they see. I wanted to mix my photography skills with my major which is animal science, working at the gives me easy access to captures still images. I find that a lot of people's emotions get stirred when they see a picture of a cute animal, from my bio class experience and animal sci classes as well.

I write so that the audience and myself can makes effective photos in stirring the viewer's emotions and inspire them to cherish animals and the art of capturing "The Moment."