Horses!

Last week, my youngest and I went to the local Saddle Club's fun day.  We don't own any horses, nor do we ride, but it was fun to go watch.  It was the first time she had ever been to something like this and she made some friends.

Photographically speaking, I was challenging myself.  I wanted to get some good shots of horses.  I was trying to capture some backlight to get that golden glow around the horse.  I had several problems that I will list because I feel like we learn so much from pictures not turning out the way we want them.

1.  Part of the problem I had was that I didn't have enough zoom, so I couldn't fill the frame with the horse.  Some of the pictures would be fine if I were closer or had zoomed in more.  (which I could probably fix with some creative cropping.)

2.  I didn't want to use a flash because I didn't know if it would be distracting to the horses or riders.  While they weren't competing for prizes, they were practicing for competitions...

3.  The sun didn't cooperate!!  Doesn't that always seem to happen?  I got a lot of great pictures early on, but then the clouds rolled in and the shutter speed began to slow down.  Things began to take on motion blur at that point, so I just went with it!  :)

4.  Please remember that I am still without my normal computer so I have no photo editing software.  All shots you are going to see are straight out of the camera (SOOC).  If I can edit them a little, I might be able to get more keepers out of the deal!  :)

Here we go!  (There are a lot, so I will do some today and some tomorrow)

Some of the events require the horse to walk or trot around the arena.  I took a position at the railing at one of the corners.  It helped to capture the horses and riders as they went by.

Here I caught some backlighting, but they were so far away, this is my max zoom for my lens (55mm)

However, if I was still zoomed in when they went by, then the shot didn't work as well... do you see how her leg seems so much larger than her head??  It's because I was still at 55mm

A shot of how the clouds are now rolling in and causing me to have to decrease my shutter speed.  When the speed is fast enough to stop the movement, like in this picture, I am underexposed.

All the riders lined up in front of the judge.

I think I will be able to get something out of this shot once I can edit it.  I like the way the backlight is showing the dust as it's kicked up.  I also like how the blonde in the horse's tail has that glow.  :)

With the slower shutter speed, some neat things happened.  Look at how the horse's face and saddle is in focus  but everything else has movement.

 There was a lot more that night.  I'll show them to you over the next few days so I don't overload my blog albums.


Have a wonderful weekend!

Tiffany