The photo's of your cattle can make or break your program. Now a days most buyers are looking online for their next purchase and most of your online sales are based on our photos. Photo's are everything in the livestock industry when selling on line or when advertising your program. A high-quality, flattering photo will help you sell cattle, semen or whatever you may be marketing. Poor photo's will turn a buyer away in a heartbeat. You're better off letting people imagine what your cattle look like than if you use sub-par photos and give people the impression that your cattle are sub-par.

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With this serious responsibility invested in photos, we as breeders need to take a serious look at our ability to portray our cattle at their absolute best. Following are a few fundamental aspects of Longhorn photography that, if followed, should help a sire or mama cow look like the champions you've told everyone they are.

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Take pictures when cattle look their best.....Spring and Summer

 

Go ahead and make up a file for each one of your herd sires, mama's, heifers, sire prospects, and weanlings, this makes things much easier and organized. If you need a photo for a sale catalog or advertisement some cold February day, you can turn to your file and pull out a photo taken last summer, with both your animal and ranch in prime condition.Don't wait until a month before the sale when cows are long-haired or in poor winter condition. Spring and Summer when the grass is green, flowers are blooming, and cattle are fat is a great time...well the only time really to take pictures of your cattle. 

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Background..it's what matters

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When photographing your cattle the background can make a huge difference. A bad background can conceal or hide the subject and totally lose the silhouette. For example, don't photograph a black bull when it is getting dark or there are dark trees behind him, or a white or mostly white cow with the horizon behind her at sunset or in a snow storm. A background of green rich pasture and blue skies is best when taking pictures. Shoot for early morning or late afternoon, lighting can make a huge difference. Make sure the sun is behind you and not in front of you and behind your subject this will cause for lighting issues and your photo won't be high quality. Try to keep other cattle out of your picture and capture one cow at a time. 

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Body Language

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 Proper feet elevation can totally change a cow's looks. It's not always possible to move cattle and pose them loose in a pasture exactly like the picture you have in mind. This is a matter of time and patience. If you do want to achieve the very best photo possible and can afford to take a little extra time, never photograph cattle with their front feet downhill from their back feet. When the front feet are positioned lower than the  hind feet, several bad things happen to the animal's anatomical appearance. Your subject will tend to appear low-backed and high-tailed, the loin muscle disappears and the shoulders sit unnaturally high as more weight is supported by the front quarters. Thus, your animal's outstanding conformation and natural posture remains the Texas Longhorn business' best-kept secret. Any photos seen by your fellow breeders should enhance the reputation of your cattle and your ranch, not harm it.

 

An ideal pose will have the animal's front feet standing an inch ortwo higher than the back feet.Your animal's body silhouette and overall conformation will look its most impressive if you can

arrange this pose.Leg position can have a lot to do with the overall look of cattle. You want your subject to stand straight and square. Anatomy is best revealed from a side-view with the legs placed in such a way that a clear silhouette of each leg is visible from the ground up to the knee or hock. This provides a good look at the animal's structure and also shows the viewer that all four legs are sound and free from blemishes or deformities of any kind.

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The ideal Texas Longhorn pose (two of the photos included with this piece are close to ideal) is a straight side-view with the head turned and facing directly into the camera. This angle displays body length, muscle, body color, topline, underline, correctness of legs and feet, general type, ear and horn shape, testicle development for bulls and udder development for cows.

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Camera Positioning

 

Camera height has a considerable effect on the appearance of the size of your subject matter. If you stand straight up and shoot with your camera held at five feet in the air at a cow which stands 52" tall, you are looking down on her. This will tend to make her look shorter-legged or smaller than she really is. The proper camera height from which to photograph a cow is as close to the center of her body as possible. This would be two or three feet for the average cow. Photographs taken from this height present a true perspective and allow proper evaluation of an individual. To achieve this height crouch down into a frog stance if you can and you will get the proper angle. 

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Written by Darol Dickinson