Goats... Not the world's easiest models

Oi! Where's the treat!

I have cool friends. Like HJ and Tani, whom I've known for almost a decade now. HJ is a photographer, and I'm very grateful that he agreed to help me create cover art for a novel I'm working on for one of my authors. One of the exciting parts of the publishing industry is cover design. Considering that I studied illustration and graphic design, I've come to the conclusion that I should roll up my sleeves and start getting my hands dirty again.

After all, I have tons of great concepts.

The idea for this story is to get a close-up image of a goat's eye. Now, the easy thing would be to go onto a spot like deviantArt and see whether there's existing art. Or even see what images are available at Wiki Commons. But I want something that's unique. Also, I'm lucky I know a lot of really creative people.

Being a photographer means not being averse to heights.

HJ is also someone who's always up for a challenge, and let me tell you, getting a goat to stand still long enough to get close enough to take a photo of its eye is... It's fun. To put it mildly.

But we got a bunch of goat pics, and there are a few that look like they'll be do-able. I'll be posting updates as I go along, because I think it's quite cool to show how the process works. My next step will be to run the raw thumbnail images past the author then chat to him with regard to the colour scheme.

I'll be doing all the retouching myself (time to dust off my PhotoShop skills). But yeah, we got out and took some shots. Now the real fun starts.

Many thanks must go to Lesley at Imhoff Farm's Blue Water Cafe for giving permission to photograph the goats. And go check out HJ's photography here.