Farm animals are the “blue-collar workers of the animal kingdom,” says Rob MacInnis. That’s why he loves it when their fine art portraits—from his “Farm Family Project” series—wind up on the walls of a toney art gallery. “Artistically, a strong throughline in my work is featuring overlooked and hidden individuals who are integral to our society but hidden from view and elevating them to places of prestige,” he explains.
When he first started the project, he’d drag a high-end studio flash kit into a dim barn and make individual portraits of farm animals with his Hasselblad 500C. Then he had an idea: use Adobe Photoshop to composite those portraits into a large group portrait similar to Annie Leibovitz’s Vanity Fair covers. “I felt that approach, especially with the humor involved in the absurdity of it all,” he says, “really spoke to the project on many levels.”
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Today he prefers his Canon R5 with animal eye detection and uses Paul C. Buff AlienBees and Einsteins for “fast flash duration and ease of use.” The animals are constantly in motion, he says, “and we are constantly changing the lighting setup, sometimes literally chasing the animals’ movements.”
MacInnis has found that developing a caring rapport with his subjects fosters the best photographic results. “The most difficult sheep and cows to photograph are the ones that have been mistreated,” he says. “The easiest are the ones who are family members of their caretakers.”
Amanda Arnold is a senior editor.
