A man and his friend

I had a friend who saw this photo and suggested I start a travel blog. Though this isn't a travel blog, it is one of my favorite photos. 

It was taken with a Canon Rebel SLR, not digital! This was my first SLR camera that my dad gave me when I was in high school. When he gave it to me he said he hoped that one day I would open up my own studio, alongside my 'real' job of course! 

The photo was taken in 2006 during my first trip back to India since I was 6. I went after graduating from undergrad to work with the Barefoot College. I took this around October of that year when the weather was starting to cool down and I was adjusting to life in a village. I had only started learning Hindi in August, so I did not catch the fact that there was a sheep shearing camp happening that day. As I walked around the campus, I wondered where everyone was and then I saw the buzzing crowd. It was just a sheep shearing camp, but it was the first ever solar powered sheep shearing camp! Members of the government of India were visiting various Rajasthani villages to promote sheep raising. Many farmers preferred goats over sheep because they felt that shearing sheep was too expensive because one had to go to someone else to sheer the sheep. The purpose of these camps was to show that sheering sheep isn't that difficult and could be a fruitful endeavor. They invited the few sheep herders around to demonstrate how to shear sheep. Barefoot learned of the camps from flyers and took up the opportunity to promote solar energy by connecting the shears to solar panels.  

This was my first time seeing a sheep being sheared. I was intrigued by the relationships between the farmers and the sheep. Barefoot asked me to go to Kotri, a nearby village, with the government members to visually document the camp for the day. It was a loooong day surrounded by sheep. One of the first farmers to come to the camp was the man in the photo. He had about 40 sheep, but out of those 40 the one in the photo was treated differently. I watched the man for a while and noticed he would hit the other sheep with a stick to get them in line, but he never laid a hand on this one other than to pet it. It was apparent that this was the farmer's favorite because of how the farmer interacted with the sheep. I love this photo because the sheep walked away from the herd to the squatting man and took the position in the photo. I saw it as a very loving and warm show of affection that even the sheep felt. 

Some people have dogs and cats and some have a sheep! 

: )