A Girl and Her Horse...

Last weekend I was assigned a story about three generations of women barrel racing at the same event. It sounded interesting enough. When I got there I found out the focus of the story had changed since just the youngest was racing. That ended up making the story a little better photo-wise. I was afraid I was going to show up and shoot a bad portrait of the three of them standing by a horse and then wait to shoot individual action shots of each of them. This one was better I got to get some photos of Bree as she got her horse warmed up and talk to her mom and grandmother during the process. The great part about it was she was the third rider in the competition so I was able to shoot her race. After the race she had pretty much forgotten about me being there and as she was walking her horse back to its trailer she stopped and gave it a kiss. It was a really sweet moment. When I was shooting it, it was one of those rare moments I knew I had the shot I wanted to use. Then I look at my camera an notice it was white balanced for the arena. Ugh! I had also had the ISO jacked up pretty high. I cringed looking at it in the LCD screen. Luckily it wasn't too blown out, just the background (which actually helped clean things up). When I got back to the office I was able to fix it pretty well. Then I noticed it was going on a black and white page. It's not often I change my photos to black and white. But after seeing this in print it really does work a lot better for these photos.

A Week in the Horse Barn...

I pretty much spent all of last week covering the Texas State 4-H Horse Show. While the weather was creeping into the high 90's and 100's it's was a little tough balancing shooting the competitions and the miserable heat. The horse barn at the Taylor County Expo Center was miserable, not only was it hotter than hell outside, but the heat was beating down on the metal roof and almost no circulation inside of there. It wouldn't have been so bad had the person riding that I needed to shoot was rider number 114. The good thing about it was I had plenty of time to play around and figure out the best place to shoot from. I ended up finding a rip in the bottom of the fence covering allowing me to get low and shoot some nice stuff.

A lot of what I shot for my photo column was non-competition, behind the scenes looks at the week. I do wish I had found the kids in the little pool the day I was stuck in the horse barn all day, since I was so drenched in sweat when I walked out it kind of looked like I had been in a pool anyway! With as little rodeo that I shot at the high school rodeo earlier in the summer this wasn't so bad spending every day out there, except for the heat.

Making the Shoe Fit...

It's my turn in the photo column rotation again. Having been short a photographer for nearly a year now it's getting tougher to come up with decent ideas that I like. So I've resorted to cruising craigslist to drum up some ideas for my old standby, people with unusual/interesting jobs. That's how I came across RJ Little. He's a farrier, he shoes horses and trims their hooves. I had actually found another one a little earlier but he wasn't from the area. So, I called him up and after talking to him for a bit he told me he'd be working on a bunch of horses on Monday.

This actually really worked out well, given that I'd be able to spend most of the day hanging out and shooting photos. It take about an hour per horse and I shot RJ working on about five different horses. The first one I got a bunch of safe shots and seeing how he works and the whole process he goes through. after that I could anticipate what he was doing and be ready for each step. It was really cool seeing the way he worked and how good he is with the horses. It made for a really fun story to shoot and was a nice change from shooting sports once in a while.

Monster Truck Madness and Horse Tryouts...

One of the things I love the most about my job is the variety of the assignments I shoot. Now, sure I love shooting football games and know I'm going to do that pretty much every Friday in the Fall. But during the week, things vary pretty often. Tuesday was the perfect example. I had to shoot tryouts for Hardin-Simmons University's six white horse team. Then after that, it was over to the Abilene Speedway to shoot monster trucks. It's tough to get much further apart on the spectrum than those.

Horsin Around...

Here's some photos from a few days at the Texas State 4-H horse show. The week was busy and I was pressed for time and was only able to spend about an hour each day out at the horse show. The good part though was at least I was able to make it out there everyday. I was happy with the overall results and the paper ended up selling a bunch of reprints from it.

A roller girl and her horse....

This is something I found this weekend. I was walking around the Taylor County Expo Center looking for features for a story about the American Junior Rodeo event that was in town for the weekend. I was actually looking for two photos, one for news, one for sports. The one for sports wouldn't be all that hard, just needed a nice action shot. Those are easy enough to find, just go to the right event. But, for news I needed something more featurey than action. So, I was walking around the horse stalls looking for whatever I could find, kids preparing their horses, saddling them, whatever I came across. That's when I saw this little kids walking (at least that's what it looked like from a far) across the parking lot. She had a sweatshirt on an her hat pulled down low on her head , but something about it looked funny. When she got closer I figured it out... she was wearing roller skates. Score! I grabbed a few shots as she rolled by me. After talking to her and her mom it was kind of funny. They told me they were from Junction, and lived out in the country and didn't have paved roads near their home so whenever she is near the pavement, often at rodeos, she pretty much has her roller skates glued to her feet when she's not competing. Well, that was easy, I knew I had my feature shot!

A Home for the Unwanted...

I have a love/hate relationship with my photo column. I hate it because, like most newspapers, we are understaffed and expected to do a lot more than we were doing four years ago. Back then we had a staff large enough to go spend a whole day on an assignment shooting it and doing interviews. Plus we had time to just go out and find something. Although, I admit I've never been too great at going out and finding a good story out of thin air, like some former co-workers I've had. On the other hand, I love the photo column when it is over. Mostly because we still get a full Life page front on Saturdays. And, normally it looks pretty good especially when you run into a good story like this one.

I found out about Sharon Hess, when I was shooting photos of Buddy Anderson a couple weeks ago. He told me how he got his horse, Mona, from Habitat for Horses, an organization that takes in abused and neglected horses seized by law enforcement. Even before I got a job in journalism, I think I've always been a journalist, which is a kind way of saying I ask a lot of questions. Even if I'm not writing a story, I'm just a naturally curious person, plus people seem to open up to me, often even times when I don't really care to know that much. However, when I'm working I'm always willing to listen. I can often pick up story ideas that way. And, it's always best when I can get photo columns out of them, since they are often a royal pain in the ass to find really good ones.

When I first talk to Sharon she was excited to get more publication about what she does. She's a pretty great person, and she and her husband and son are extremely selfless people. Often taking in abused horses who, the only thing they've done wrong are been given to the wrong owners, who don't feed them and often beat them. Some of the horses, are in such bad shape, it's amazing that of the 171 horses Hess has taken in over the last four years, she has only lost 13 of them.

Something else I find amazing is that the Hesses pay for all the feed, hay and vet bills out of their own pockets. The 25 horses and three donkeys they have right now cost them about $800 a month, and that's when they are all healthy. And Sharon told me they rarely can go on vacation or out of town because someone has to go feed the horses every day.

In talking to her I could really tell the compassion she had for these animals, and the unconditional love she showed for each one. It's really nice to see things like this at a time where economy is in the tank, there are still people that dig into their own pockets to help the helpless. Here is a link to the story which also has an audio slideshow with it, that has an interview with Sharon about what she does.

Starting the New Year off in a good light...

Saturday was a busy day, and this assignment almost never happened. I had two other assignments and this was basically "find a feature at the cutting show." Now, if you've never been to a horse cutting event, even the participants will tell you this, it's pretty damn boring to watch if you don't do it, or know what you're looking for. I have absolutely no idea what I'm looking for. So, when I have to go shoot these events, I don't even bother entering the arena, I just look for something going on outside.

Here's where the "this almost didn't happen part comes in. In between an assignment out of town and two basketball games and working desk I had to do this. Basically I had about 15 minutes to find something. So, I get to the Taylor County Expo Center, park and walk into the horse barns. That's when I saw this great light , there were a few people around with their horses, so I just stood around waiting for someone to walk through this great light. Well after about 10 minutes I had nothing and was getting nervous. When a young kid asked me what I was doing, after I told him I was taking photos for the newspaper he asked what I wanted him to do to get in the paper. After explaining that I don't set up photos, he told me he was taking his horse to the wash bay. I figured I'd follow him there, and get some shots of him washing his horse, since no one was taking advantage of this great light.

After spending my last few minutes of my time getting some decent shot of the kid washing his horse I was walking out of the barn, when I saw this great site. Don Long was "tuning up" his horse. And the best part is, the cutting that the horse was doing was kicking up dust to make the rays of light even nicer! I spent about 5-10 minutes shooting, waiting for him to be in the light just right. After he got done I got his name talked to him for a couple minutes and then took off (late) for my basketball game, but happy I stuck around. The basketball game was nothing special, but I knew as I was leaving I had something nice from this, it was worth be late to basketball.