In today’s stereo by the press photo pioneer James Edward Ellam (1857-1920), we return to the Pictorialist style with which I began this series of blogposts (“On The Look Out – 1st September 2023).

Here, James has carefully staged a familiar rural scene he’s titled “Sheep Shearing.”

In the immediate foreground, a group of sheep are enclosed in a pen made of wooden hurdles with a few waiting patiently close by.

In the middle distance,  a shearer, hard at work with a set of hand clippers, is flanked by a pile of fleeces to his right at the base of a tree.

If you look closely, you will see a bearded man together with a young child hiding behind the tree, but failing to avoid being caught on camera.

Again, James has used a black card mount and the vertical “J.E. Ellam” sticker with its handwritten title on the verso suggests this stereo was taken in the middle 1890s.

Tomorrow: “Golf.”

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.