Lior Patel, from Israel, works as a full-time commercial photographer, and decided to focus on the farmyard animal for his latest project.
The 42-year-old told Newsweek he’d photographed smaller flocks before, but decided to take on the epic challenge of following a herd of up to 1,700 sheep.
Patel spent the last seven months following the animals as they migrated from their winter to summer pastures across Yokneam, in northern Israel.
Patel explained: “I had shot smaller flocks of sheep in the past just for fun, I saw the motion and I knew that if I can locate a large flock, it will be a fantastic opportunity to dig deeper into this subject. I contacted several farmers, asking for a lead, and got the flock’s owner’s number, he invited me to be with them for as long as I want (we both didn’t think it’ll drag for seven months).”
Left with hours and hours of footage, Patel decided to create a short time-lapse video of the flock to share online, which has since blown up.
Sharing the footage to his Instagram page in June, he said: “Sheep in fast motion. For the past seven months I have been following a large herd of sheep, from winter pasture to the movement and arrival at the summer pasture. The size of the herd ranges from 1000-1700 sheep.”
Explaining more about the background to the filming, Patel said: “Already in my first encounter with the herd, I was really addicted to the impressive movement of the sheep and realized that the first challenge is to understand the elasticity of the herd during the movement, its dispersal during grazing and how it converges into one tight pack towards exit / return from pasture and crossing roads and paths.
“When it comes to this specific work, due to the unpredictable elasticity of the herd structure during movement, I think it was right to let the sheep show the movement when the camera is relatively fixed in place (in the air) for about 4-7 minutes per shot (before accelerating in post) so, apart from the opening shot with a complex camera movement following the herd’s exit to the winter pasture, the rest of the shots are based on a “fixed” camera position in the air.”
Patel used a DJI Mavic pro 2 for the project, as he praised the farmers and helpers, Keith Markov, Michael Morgan, Mustafa Tabash, Mahmoud Kaabiyah, Dan Goldfinger and Eyal, for allowing him to capture the animals in a way few have ever seen.
“Mustafa and his family, with the help of the herding dogs, manage the flock’s movement in an exemplary and fascinating way. The transition from winter pasture to summer pasture stems from the need to supplement the herd’s diet in the absence of green grass during the dry season and hot months and to provide them with adequate shelter during the summer, so the entire herd relocates in impressive movement along 5-7 kilometers from the peace Valley to the outskirts of Ramot Menashe.
“Thanks to the impressive hospitality of the shepherd and his family, who made every effort to explain the expected movements and how the herd behaved in the pasture, I came up with a general plan, which matured at the end of a process as a documentation of the herd between the green winter pasture towards the more convenient summer pasture location as the fields turn yellow, including the movement within Yokneam (the colony) main road towards the shearing of the wool,” he said.
Numerous people have commented on the clip online, with The_spiritual_sailor raving: “This is so magical.”
While Coach.berradzakaria thought: “True piece of art.”
And The.marvels.of.daily.life raved: “This is the craziest, most amazing thing I’ve ever seen .”
Commenting on how popular the video has become, Patel told Newsweek it was completely unexpected.
“Seven months of frequent visits obviously left me with hours of footage, but a week ago, I decided to edit a short “time-lapse”, posted it on my Facebook page, shared it on two Israeli photography pages, went to drink coffee for a couple of minutes, came back, saw 20 shares, thought I was nice and all, left the house for a couple of ours, came back and… Holy hell! it went to the moon!” he added.
