Herding sheep for shearing at Ganora

Herding sheep for shearing at Ganora
The western side of the Eastern Cape’s hinterland has the wide open spaces of the Karoo. We go there regularly and stay at Ganora farm just outside Nieu Bethesda. Kate has a long term scientific study into soil erosion on the farm whilst I get to shoot the sky, the land and the activities. This past couple of days we have been witnessing the herding of the sheep for shearing. So today’s Friday photo shows the scene yesterday, lit by the late afternoon sun, as the last batch were brought in to the shearing shed. The sun was at my back and so the shadows from the ridge behind me focused nicely with the clouds above the farm on to the scene on the right.

RODDY FOX

Roddy is a self taught photographer whose first camera, a Zeiss Ikon, was bought in 1974 from a second hand dealer in Glasgow. Through the forty years since then, he's taken landscape photographs with Pentax, Olympus and FujiFilm systems for his teaching and research as a geography academic at Kenyatta and Rhodes Universities. He has always been inspired by great nature and landscape photographers such as Nick Brandt, Beth Moon, Obie Oberholzer and Hans Strand. Since taking early retirement he has been able to pursue his passion for photography, published a photobook ’Symmetry in Nature’ and held three solo exhibitions at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa. 

His landscape photography is about light: often at low angles, of forests, mist and clouds, the night sky and lightning. He prints on different media depending on the affects he wants to produce: brushed aluminium for reflecting angled light; Hahnemühle German Etching paper for soft diffusion; Ilford Metallic Gloss for vibrant night pictures.

His conceptual photography uses mirroring and merging of layers to explore patterns, motifs and the feminine in nature.