The Farrier's Buddy

Buddy was at the ranch today waiting for his mom, the farrier, to hurry up shoeing Ranger and Liberty so that he could get back home to his warm bed.

Keywords: close-up, cropped view, dog, canine, animal, eye, nose, pet, color image, outdoors, fur, one animal, no people, nobody

Do Backgrounds Matter?

YES.

The whole bit about making lemonade out of lemons doesn't really help when the lemons are bad to begin with. The Ace Brown Rodeo Grounds in Camp Pendleton is my bad lemon. It's host to a few horse shows every year and sadly, its appearance has been getting pretty bad. Case in point: On the south side of the grounds facing the main arena used to be large white wooden bleachers. It wasn't the best looking background but I could work with it. Now I can't. Sometime between last September and last weekend the south side looks like it was used in a Marine bomb training exercise.

The bottom picture is an example of the new background. The halter class gave me next to nothing to work with. Since shooting on the opposite side was a no go, I tried to get in close to shallow out the depth of field. Nope. Still to far back. My only option was to crop it real tight and hope for the best.

Most of all the other classes were on the rail so I was able to avoid the south side when I could. Below is the best background I was able to work with. Oh yeah, it was maybe 8 feet long.

Lead Line - 8 & Under

The SCPHA open show schedule for 2010 has begun! The horse show was held at Camp Pendleton, CA on Sunday, Jan 17th under sunny skies in the morning and wet rainy weather in the late afternoon. It was a long show that must have ended an hour or two after I left the grounds at 5:30pm. I would have stayed longer if the arena was adequately lit but the sun was setting behind dark gray rain-spitting clouds (I had the camera set to almost its highest ISO and I still couldn't push the speed up over 60th of a second).

Besides all of the weather drama, it was a fun show. My favorite part is always the lead line class. Here kids under 8 are dressed in their finest riding attire while mom/dad or "significant other" parades them in a line around the show judge. Like always, every kid is a blue-ribbon winner!

More images from the Southern California Professional Horseshow Association Camp Pendleton open show event are located here.

Seasoned Riders

Guess which rider is a seasoned AERC endurance/limited distance rider?

If you guessed the 6 year old you would be correct! This is her 4th ride. To contrast, for the two rider/horse teams at the top Warner Springs is their first endurance ride.

Warner Springs 2010 Endurance Ride

I just finished editing all the ride photos from the Friday/Saturday Warner Springs endurance ride event. My assistant and I shot just under 900 images and it took most of Sunday to edit and process them down for online gallery upload.

We arrived at Warner Springs Ranch (about 40 minutes NE of Temecula) on Friday afternoon so that the spot could be scoped out before dark. Back at ridecamp, the riders were busy checking in their horses and getting ready for the morning event.

Despite the cold morning temperature of 34 degrees and the fact that we had to stand and wait 65 minutes (yes, I was counting) for the first 50 mile rides to pass by me, we managed to capture every Warner Springs endurance rider without missing a beat.

Stanley

Stanley: Age ~2yrs, Chihuahua mix, incredibly smart, loves tearing apart the same stuffed toy (and waiting patiently for it to be repaired), has a nickname of Squirrel, and is one lucky adopted dog!

Little Cyrus

Little Cyrus gazing out the kitchen window.