Heavy shooting schedule

I've had a "heavy" shooting schedule this week, in that I got out to meet the Clydesdale herd not once but twice. Made my first foray on Wednesday, accompanied by my grandson Mark who was with me for the day, it being one of the many "off school" days enjoyed by students everywhere. Despite the temperature not being too bad, given how things have been around here lately, it was still nippy due to the humidity in the air and a bit of falling snow. Nevertheless, we had an enjoyable time meeting Darrell, the owner of these fine horses, and getting a tour of his herd (heavies and riding horses)and the immaculate surroundings and facilities of his son's farm where they live. 

We got a welcome big jump in temperatures for a few days towards the weekend, although it was  accompanied by a couple of days of wild wind that polished the highways into glare ice and made road travel hazardous, particularly in the south of the province. It wasn't too bad for me getting back and forth to the barn,  but ground drift made the roadways hard to see in places. Yet another of the many occasions when I was very glad to have snow tires on my vehicle. They enhance performance in bad conditions and can make the difference between getting to where you are going or ending up nose-first in a ditch. The older I get, the more I like to have the odds of nothing going wrong stacked in my favor!

Speaking of aging and things going wrong, I learned today that one of my older friends (in both senses of the word) has been in an accident. Short version is she came out on the losing side of an episode with her horse (she was in the paddock on foot at the time) and has ended up in a wheelchair with a broken wrist and hip, philosophical but not happy about the whole situation. She's had her surgeries and now has a plate in her hip. The part that made me smile through my words of commiseration was her comment that she was coming along, and figured that by spring she'd be able to ride again. It will be a race to see whether she has her "first" ride before or after her 80th birthday which is coming up before too long. That's a rider for you. Hope I've still got that sort of grit and determination when I'm that age. Mind you, many days I don't think I've got it now!!

First shot today is one I meant to post last week but somehow got it switched out with another one. This is one of the "boring sunrise" shots from the previous weekend. Made slightly less boring by some judicious work with Photoshop. Of course there have been a couple of really spectacular sunrises since then, on mornings when I couldn't possibly have made it to a good vantage point for photos. Wish there was some way of knowing ahead of time which sunrises would be worth driving out into the country for.

Shot number two is just silly. This is Oscar, one of my dogs. I was playing with my new short lens and since I am a fan of these extreme foreshortening shots I had to try one out. Could have been better (by which in this case I mean even more extreme and odd) but he wasn't being overly co-operative, so this was as good as I got. Standing over dogs and trying to get them to look straight up at the camera isn't as easy as I think it should be. Maybe I need an assistant with dog biscuits for this type of shot.

The final three are fairly self-explanatory. Shot three shows the young Clydes heading back out to their field, after being in the barn for a bit for a nice morning feed. Shot number two shows Mark being checked out by one of the boys. Kids are great to have on horse shoots since the horses are generally quite curious about, and interested in, children, much more so than they usually are about adults. Mark is always a pleasure to have on any shoot since he is also a budding photographer, is good company, and is exceedingly sensible around animals, so I don't ever have to worry about him. 

Shot number five is from my second visit to the Clydes, which took place earlier this afternoon. We had arranged this visit on the weekend when the weather was relatively decent, wind aside, but by the time I got out there today we were looking at minus 20 or so with a wind that gave us a windchill in the minus 30s. Which would explain why my hands and face got so desperately cold and painful very fast out there this afternoon. Lighting wasn't the best (I know, it's my perennial complaint this winter) but at least was a little less dim than on my previous shoot. This gelding was giving me some great action, but I wasn't quite far enough away from him for the big lens to capture it to the extent I would have liked. Guess I'll just have to go back and try again another day!!