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.

High School Rodeo Finals...

Somehow this year I didn't spend nearly as much time shooting the high school rodeo finals as I had in the past. I did get to shoot the Saturday night short round. This one is always fun because the top finishers in these events are the ones who make the national team and get to compete in Wyoming at the national finals rodeo. That's what makes shooting the Saturday night go-round so much fun, since there is so much emotion among the winners, plus since it's their last chance they're usually going for broke and leaving it all out there. Makes for good times and some decent images.