Taking Pictures of Alpacas

We're taking Del to an alpaca show at the Oregon State Fair on Friday. Since Del is for sale, we thought we'd make up a little flyer about him and take our sales list with us. Making the flyer started with taking pictures. To take the pictures, we decided to put Del on a lead and lead him around the property. Pam would lead. I would take pictures. It all sounded so easy.

I believe I have mentioned in previous posts that my digital camera is almost an antique. I think it's close to ten years old at this point. It works, but it doesn't have all the fancy features or a zoom.

We put Del on a lead and I started trying to take pictures. Every time Del got a good pose, I would push the shutter, Del would move, and the picture would be taken -- in that order.



The results were something like the picture above in which Del has a fairly good pose, but he's not looking at the camera.



Other times, we would have the picture framed just right, but Del or Pam would turn and we'd end up with a Del in front of Pam.



And then we thought this shrub -- it's an Oregon Grape -- would make a nice backdrop until we looked at the picture and realized the folly in taking pictures of a black alpaca against a dark green bush.



And this is a pretty good picture, but wait, is that a hand under Del's chin?



When an alpaca gets tired of posing for the camera, you have to talk nice to him.



We did, however, get this picture of Del. He's a good looking alpaca.