For The Love of Horses

 Yesterday, while at a family picnic to celebrate my inlaws' 60th wedding anniversary, my son and I wandered across the street from the park to the riding academy. We took carrots and before we knew it, we had horses coming up to the fence for a snack.

We share an affinity for horses. We like to ride. He's exceptionally good at it. We have some very good memories of riding 4 hours up into the alpine in the Kootneys and picnicking at the summit, overlooking Slocan Lake. The world is a different place on the back of a horse.

 Inspired by the things I am learning about using natural light in the Light Hunters class and the technical info from the photog book I just bought the other day, I took some odd angled shots of our new equine friends.

I love the texture in this one and the contrast of colours.

Some thoughts from shooting yesterday:

-Horses smell good. There's something very comforting about their scent.

-The best setting I've found for photographing animals is to use the sports setting which allows you to shoot multiple frames with the single push of the button. Animals tend to move quickly and their expressions change faster than people's. If you shoot this way, when you upload your photos, you will have more images to choose from and often I find there are some great surprises in terms of what I've been able to capture.

-Zeroing in on a single body part can yield some beautiful shots. It also gives you a better sense of the animal, especially if it's large.

-Horses do not think cameras will steal their souls.