Chickens

As part of the coverage over the proposed Sanderson Farms Chicken Processing plant, a reporter and I took a trip to chicken farm. Several things I forgot about chicken farms: low low light, humid as all get out, and lens fogging sucks. I worked the situation and came away with some images I was rather happy with. Thankfully we were giving protective jump suits to wear so it wasn't an issue to lie down on the lovely floor of the chicken barn. Felt like Godzilla the way the chickens scattered.

Chicken farms are a pretty sensitive issue for animal people, and I really wanted to portray them as accurately as possible. The barns were huge, there were about 30,000 chicks in there and you would never guess. The chicks had plenty of food, water, ventilation, space and it was cleaner than you'd expect a barn to be. However, because it was so spacious the amount of chicks in the barn was difficult to show. While the farmer was giving us a tour the chicks kept moving further away until majority of them were clumped together. It was a great shot to show the amount of chickens, but I was concerned that it would misrepresent the conditions they were kept in (I don't want to risk someone not reading the caption and start complaining about overcrowding). I sat down with my editor and went over my concerns. I requested that the crowd of chickens not be lead (the little chick in the middle of the barn was). We settled that it could run as a secondary art along with the wide shot of the ventilation system. I was pretty happy with that arrangement and I think my editor appreciated that my mind worked in that way (thank you Loret!)

On a side note, for the portrait of the two farmers with the chick in the foreground-1. wish I had used more depth of field so the chick would be more in focus. 2. when a chick doesn't running away when you commando crawl towards it, should be an indicator that something is wrong with. Didn't realize until after I finished the picture that the chick had a bum leg and I couldn't get another chick to stay in the darn frame. We decided because of the lack of focus, it looked more like he was hopping or running and not that he had a bad leg.