When Kimberly Little, owner of Little Moments Photography, posted her Christmas calf mini session photos of 6-month-old John Waylon and her Jersey calf named Rudolph, she never expected it to go viral on Facebook. The post she made on Dec. 9, 2021, has received over a million views, 23,000 likes, 21,000 comments and 77,000 shares.
“I posted it on my page that afternoon, and when I woke up the next morning, I asked myself, ‘What is going on?’ I looked on my phone and pulled it up and was in astonishment of how it had spread overnight,” Little says. “The crazy thing about it is I wasn't even sure I was going to do the Rudolph cow mini sessions last year. I had thought of the idea, but I wasn't 100 percent sure on it because I didn't know if it would be that big a deal because it was just a Christmas session. But my friends, my kids and my husband said I should do it.”
Little planned out the session and knew she wanted a Jersey calf in the photos. So, she went to a local dairy farm in Georgia where the owner had Jersey bull calves for sale.
“Rudolph was actually the dinkiest one of the group, and he looked like a little runt. That is what drew me in to him even more,” Little says.
When taking photos with baby calves, the biggest challenge is getting the calf to lie down and stay lying down.
“It's a really hard process. It takes patience on my side, and it takes patience from the parents because we're basically fighting with a kid and an animal,” Little says. “Sometimes we get the calf settled, but then the kid is not settled. And then other times we get the kid settled and [the] calf isn’t. It's just fighting on both ends. But once we do, I get amazing shots.”
Little says her patience with her clients and their kids, and her calf, is what makes her photography unique.
“I never rush the process. I take my time, and I'm very interactive with my clients and my clients' children. I don't even start a session until I play with the kid for a minute and engage with the child. I make sure the child is comfortable with me first and get the parents involved to where I can ease the child down with the animal,” Little says. “Because I don't rush it and have patience, that's why I get the shots I get.”
Little’s favorite thing about taking photos of kids and calves is going home and seeing what she has captured and then editing and posting the photos on Facebook.
“I snap photos really fast on my camera. I never know what I have until I get home and I upload them. I don't sneak looks because I like to be surprised,” Little says. “I also love reading the comments on Facebook and seeing how much joy it brings people to see those images. Never in a million years would I have thought that my photography would have been shared and boosted to what it has. And I'm just really proud of that.”
The finished photos bring Little so much pride to see the children’s smiles and to see her animals happy.
“I always get really excited. I stay up late at night to edit because I have kids, and I usually don't get to it during the day with the chaos,” Little says. “Sometimes I'll get done editing a session at two o'clock in the morning, and I will love it so much. But I have a rule: I don't post during the night. I always wait until morning or during the day to do my posting because it does better online that way.”
Little started taking cow photos three years ago after her cow-obsessed daughter wanted photos with one. After posting those photos to her photography page, it took off from there to where cow photography is mainly all she does. The photos are taken on her farm in Troy, Alabama, in front of her husband’s great grandmother’s old house.
“I love this session spot because we have a really big magnolia tree there, and I use that tree to have the lighting I want because no matter what time of the day it is, I always have shade and a good area to work in where it's not too overexposed,” Little says.
Next to her photography location is a pen with goats, chickens and turkeys in it. She uses those animals as a bargaining tool. If the kids are good while taking their photos, she lets them go in afterward to feed the goats and chickens.
“I don't think I will ever change the spot or location just because it's good interaction for my clients,” Little says. “A lot of them live in town, so their kids don't always get to experience farm life.”
Little plans to do her Christmas calf mini sessions again this year and is completely booked already for the year. Each mini session is 30 minutes long, and the clients receive 10-15 retouched images.
“I'm probably going to do the same thing I did as last year just because everybody loved how it was and how the images turned out,” Little says. “I'm real simple. I’ll do maybe a Christmas tree and then, of course, have a new Rudolph with his antlers on.”
