The next best thing to photographing wild horses is an outdoor horse show. Unfortunately most of them are late morning/early afternoon events and the lighting is, um, really really bad.
My daughter is a riding instructor at Harmony Horse Stables in Littleton and we occasionally go to shows to watch her ride (as an instructor she doesn’t usually do that much competitive riding) along with others from the barn. She had asked me a few weeks ago to do a little video of her and Duke doing some jumps. Sure.
So two weeks ago Betsy informs me that Cathy has some jumping events at a show in Millis that they go to each Wednesday afternoon in July and August. They’ve been going there the past few years… (long pause) Let me get this straight. There’s an outdoor horse show that takes place in the late afternoon summer light…. Each week… And nobody thought to mention this to me?
So I booked out of work on Wednesday afternoon and headed down to Apple Knoll Farm in Millis. It wasn’t everything I had hoped for (a hill to the west of the farm kills the sweetest light), but these are by far the nicest horse show photographs I’ve ever taken. I can’t make it each week, but we went for a few weeks this year and this is something that will definitely be on the list for next year photographing “Team Harmony”.
See my “Harmony on the Rails” series at http://harmony.dmg-photography.com