California

Horse Show Pan Blurs

I’m at a horse show this week, so it seems appropriate to feature equestrian-themed images. I’m having fun playing around with pan blurs – a camera setting where the shutter speed is set to slow. When I’m trying to freeze action I set my camera at 1/2000 second. For pan blurs I slow it down to 1/30 second. This causes all motion to be blurred. The challenge is to ‘pan’ the camera to follow the subject, trying to capture something significant sharp and in focus even as the rest of the image is blurred and streaked from the movement of the camera as it follows the horse and rider.

The successes are few and far between! I might take a thousand images at high speed and discard all but a handful. Below is an example of a fail, to give you an idea. And even when I successfully catch the focus, the position of the subject matters as well. There is no pleasure in viewing an awkward gesture, in focus or not!

Here is the same horse, in the same class – one of the few successes among the many throwaways. The camera autofocus locked in on his head and neck, plus the rider – just enough to give the photo a focal point of clarity while everything else blurs, adding to the impression of motion and speed.

Show jumping is a colorful sport, with brightly painted jumps and gaily waving flags to frame the horse/rider combinations. As a result, in post-processing, I like to amp up the saturation to add to the artistry of the finished image. This one has been added to my online portfolio.

Posted by Carol in California

A Celebration of Dolphins

Last Thursday was National Dolphin Day. I’ve been pretty busy fulfilling orders for my Mother’s Day sale but I had time to post this image on Facebook and it got a lot of attention. I thought it would be fun to share some more information about this rather unique shot.

I’m quite proud of this photograph. It was awarded a prize in an exhibition held at the San Diego Museum of Art a few years ago.

We were sailing off the coast of Southern California early one morning, embarking on a passage north to spend the summer in British Columbia. I was perched on the bow of the boat, legs hanging over the side but with one arm wrapped securely around a stanchion for safety, shooting straight down at a pod of dolphins that were riding the boat’s bow wave.

With the rising sun low in the sky to port, the starboard side of the boat’s hull was in deep shadow, which enabled me to capture a clean image with no glare. The result is so abstract that often viewers guess at the subject matter! What you see is the back of a dolphin rising to the surface, dorsal fin just breaking clear of the water as bubbles from his exhaled breath cascade down his back. 

This is a true SOC (straight out of camera) image. I love to put my personal touch on my photographs back in my digital darkroom, but there was literally nothing I could do to improve on this image.

Here’s another shot I captured the same morning. These are Pacific white-sided dolphins, abundant off the west coast of North America as well as other parts of the world. Luckily for me, they are renowned for their fondness of riding the bow waves of boats!

Posted by Carol in California

Horse Show Season Really Is Over!

 

“Are We Having Fun Yet?” – I love this photo of Salvador Alvarado and CCF Hibiscus Coast hanging out before a class. It really captures the adrenalin and action of horse show competition, dontcha think?

March 14, 2020

Originally the title of this post just referred to the fact that the big hunter-jumper circuits that take place every winter in the warm southern states were winding down, and so was my focus on equine-themed photography. I attended a few shows in Thermal, California, and in my own home town of Tucson, Arizona, photographing my own horses and my own daughter who is a professional rider/trainer/coach based near San Diego, and I was prepping to share some of the fun and action captured by my camera.

But now, of course, the season really is over! Along with multiple other sporting events, horse shows are canceling competitions for at least the next 30 days. Included in those many casualties coast to coast is the FEI World Cup that was coming to Las Vegas in April.

As originally planned, I am sharing some of those show jumping images I captured last month. And then I think the focus going forward is going to be Vicarious Travel – as in, since I’m staying close to home and won’t be traveling for the foreseeable future, it’s time to dig into those photo files and see what treasures I can find and share from previous adventures. I also have closet-cleaning and file organization on my activity schedule!

So enjoy a little distraction from the gloomy state of the world. I promise my emails and slideshows are germ free, although I wouldn’t mind if they went viral;-)

 

 

 

PS – I’m getting ready to offer some print giveaways over on Facebook. Be sure to Like my page so you don’t miss out!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by Carol in Arizona, California

Photographer Mom

February 7, 2020

As I photographer I wear two hats. First, I love to travel in pursuit of scenic nature and wildlife subjects. I’ve ventured far afield with my camera gear by automobile, airplane, and boat, from the South Pacific to the Arctic to Africa, from desert vistas to underwater realms. I have struggled to come up with a simple label that could summarize the variety of my subject matter, until recently a mentor suggested Wanderlust and Wildlife. Perfect!

And second, I am a lifelong horse person. My mother was a horsewoman, I grew up with horses, and I currently have a farm with about twenty equine residents. I raise a couple of foals each year and provide a retirement home for some old-timers. And my daughter Michelle is continuing the family legacy in her professional career as a trainer, rider, and coach of show jumpers.

That’s me in a photo taken many decades ago in Nogales, Arizona, riding my mom’s thoroughbred mare Wait For Me.

So when I attend the horse shows to watch Michelle ride and cheer on my young horses, I wear my other hat and am known around the barn as Photographer Mom. That moniker may have to expand, because my granddaughter is showing similar symptoms of a serious horse passion. Do I really want to be called Photographer Grandma?

All of which is a lengthy introduction to my first blog of 2020 – a collection of equine images created during the big Desert Circuit in Thermal, California. First of all, I am going to reveal a dark secret. I am not one of those photographers who ‘captures it in camera’. For me, my images are the RAW material (double entendre for any serious photogs reading this) from which I draw creative inspiration. I’ve decided to adopt the phrase Art From Photography as my mantra.

To illustrate, I’m going to share the transformation of an image as it progresses from 1: Straight out of camera 2: Quick crop and edit 3: More aggressive crop and edit, and finally 4: In-depth photo processing (yes, Photoshop) to create my own artistic interpretation of the scene. Here’s a photo that is an extreme example of that workflow.

Because I am shooting from outside the show arena, most of the jumps are pretty far away, especially in Thermal where the Grand Prix field is enormous. This calls for a powerful zoom lens but, even so, sometimes the distances are pretty extreme. This shot was taken as sort of a throwaway effort. I was set up to shoot some big oxers close by the rail, so that I could fill my camera frame. But as long as I was there, why not aim at a few of the more distant jumps just for the heck of it.

Here is the original photo, straight out of the camera. Taken from far away with a 100-400mm zoom lens (because I forgot to switch to the 200-600mm), underexposed, and crooked! I’m embarrassed to share it with you.

Here it is with a quick touch-up. Cropped, straightened, and some quick exposure adjustments. Often I do this on the showgrounds by exporting the image from my camera to my iPhone and tweaking it there to make it presentable for a quick share.

Here it is with more careful post-processing once I am home on my computer with my digital darkroom tools at hand.

And here’s the final creation, courtesy of Photoshop, art filters, and a heavy dose of artistic license.

I titled this image “XOXO”. I love the unique style of this horse, crossing his hind feet to stay clear of the jump. Even better, his crossed ankles are repeated in the criss-crossed jump standards in the background.

And this is a good time to give a shout-out to the professional horse show photographers who shoot every single horse that enters the ring, all day, every day. They run back and forth umpteen times from vantage point #1 to vantage point #2 for each and every round. They kneel, stand up and kneel again, over and over (my aging knees barely withstand even one crouch and recover). And there is no way they have the time to post-process the hundreds of photographs they take each and every day during a show. They really do have to get it right ‘straight out of the camera’, whereas I have the luxury of following around a handful of horse/rider combinations, taking multiple shots of each through the week, then culling out the bad and zeroing in on the good. Which is a labor of love because I truly enjoy the creative process involved.

And I enjoy sharing the results with you. Here are a few keepers from last week at the show. Not all resulted from such dramatically challenging origins, but now you know my deepest, darkest secret!

By the way, I hardly ever wear a hat!

 

 

 

‘Art From Photography’ 

Posted by Carol in California, USA

2019 Top Twenty-Five

December 31, 2019

Happy 2020 to you all! I can’t thank you enough for all your enthusiasm and support. It means the world to me and keeps me motivated.

Tomorrow we ring in not only the New Year but a new decade. I’m looking forward to new adventures, photographic and otherwise. January will start off with equestrian competitions on the West Coast. We anticipate some boating adventures throughout the year from our floating base in Dana Point, California. And I’ve already booked a June photo workshop in Scotland with Denise Ippolito to photograph seabirds (puffins and gannets), and another trip with Denise to Bosque del Apache next November for the amazing migrating sandhill cranes and snow geese. Who knows what other interesting subjects will find their way in front of my lens!

But on this last day of 2019, here’s a bit of nostalgia – presenting my Top 25 Most-Liked Photos from social media for the year. Click your way through each captioned image to view in high resolution and to read more about it.

Thank you again for your interest and participation. I look forward to sharing much more with you this coming year.

Cheers,

 

 

 

CLICK FOR PHOTO SLIDESHOW

Posted by Carol in Africa, California
Portrait of a Grey Hunter

Portrait of a Grey Hunter

February 2018

Every winter, horse show participants make the trek with their four-legged partners to warm weather climes where huge hunter/jumper circuits run for months on end. Instead of suffering through record snowfall and freezing temps, they choose balmy sunshine in states like Florida, California, and Arizona. Literally tens of thousands of equestrians and support personnel make the journey each and every winter season.

My daughter Michelle is a professional rider and trainer based in California, so she participates in this mass migration, in her case to the Palm Springs area where the HITS Coachella Circuit starts in mid-January and continues into mid-March. HITS, not so coincidentally, is short for Horse Shows in The Sun!

I try to attend a week or two here or there, both to cheer on my daughter and also because some of the horses she rides belong to our jointly owned Cross Creek Farms!  I breed and raise the babies here in Tucson, and when they are old enough they travel to California and learn their trade as hunters and jumpers.

It’s a great environment for an avid photographer, with all the color and action of showjumping. I’ve earned the nickname ‘Photographer Mom’ from my daughter, as I follow her and her students from ring to ring to record their rounds.

The photograph featured here is of a young Holsteiner stallion named Lutalo that Michelle bred and raised. It’s easy to take a beautiful image of a beautiful horse but the background of a horse show can be distracting. I put in quite a few hours today applying some digital magic to the original photo to create a fine art image that I’m pleased to add to my portfolio. There is a quality I look for in my photography, something I refer to as gesture, that expresses the essence of the subject matter. Here gesture is expressed in the direct eye contact, elegantly curved neck, perfect braids, and the warmth of color in the leather rein.

Prints available for purchase in my online ART PRINT STORE

 

 

 

Posted by Carol in California, USA
Feel the Speed

Feel the Speed

 

In honor of the illustrious Breeders’ Cup World Championships held this past weekend in California, it seemed appropriate to feature racehorses as the subject for Photo of the Week. In addition I am a member of a professional horse photography group that challenges its members with weekly assignments. This week the topic was ‘Race’. These two not so coincidentally related events reminded me that a few years ago I had photographed the thoroughbred races at the Del Mar track in California. I never did anything with the resulting images, so this prompted me to go back to my files and browse through them until I found this.

Every photograph has a story to tell. The focus of this particular story is the body language and expression of the lead horse trying its heart out to win. The vibrant colors of the race track are a pleasure to photograph, but in this instance they just distracted from the essence of the shot, which is why I chose to convert to black & white. The blurred motion created by using a slow shutter panning technique amplifies the feeling of speed.

 SHOP THIS PRINT

Nikon D7000, 1/30 sec at f/22.0, ISO 200, 300mm (28.0-300.0mm lens)

Photo is copyrighted and registered with the US Copyright Office. Enjoy but please respect.

 

Posted by Carol in California, USA
Portrait of a Thoroughbred

Portrait of a Thoroughbred

 

Week before last I escaped Tucson’s hot spell by driving over to California for a horse show. I spent the week catching up with daughter Michelle, watched the horses compete, socialized my new puppy Truffle, and got acquainted with a new camera and lens recently added to my gear bag.

Ever since I’ve been rummaging through the photos I took and applying some artistic license to my favorites. Back on the computer, it’s always fun to apply some artistic creativity to the original digital RAW files. Today’s PHOTO OF THE WEEK is actually PHOTOS plural, as I’ve posted several of my keepers newly added to my online portfolio!

This week’s headliner is an OTTB (off-the-track thoroughbred) mare named Ladybug, purchased as a four-year-old by Lauren Boswell of Tucson. Lauren has been training Bug herself over the years and successfully turned her into a competitive jumper. The duo had a great week while I was there – winning several classes against tough California competition. She’s a very pretty mare, and I was quite taken with her hand-crocheted fly bonnet, themed after her namesake! I took photos after photos of Ladybug with the camera set to burst mode, trying to catch just the right moment. Since she has the nervous habit of tossing her head up and down and gapping her mouth constantly most were throwaways best suited to illustrate horse dentistry. But this photo caught her with mouth closed and chin tucked into a very ladylike, demure pose that shows off her refined head and colorful bonnet.

In regards to that new camera, a Nikon D500, last night I attended a seminar for getting up to speed on its new features – and was told there are 1.2 million different setting combinations possible in that one camera body! Mind boggling.

Prints of Portrait of a Thoroughbred are available for purchase HERE.

Sony a7R II, 1/1000 sec at f/4.0, ISO 400, 200 mm (FE 70-200mm F4 G OSS). Handheld.

All photos are copyrighted and registered with the U.S. Copyright Office. Please respect.

SLIDESHOW – Click any image to start.

Posted by Carol in California, USA
Left to the Triple Combination

Left to the Triple Combination

This is a ringside shot of Saer Coulter aboard Don VHP competing in the Grand Prix during the 2013 HITS Desert Circuit in Thermal, California. Saer is a California girl in her early twenties, a successful grand prix competitor who has graduated to international competition. On the day I took this shot, it was windy with blowing dust. The sky had a grungy tinge and the ringside banners stood straight out flapping during the competition.

On a really windy day, the jumps start falling without any assistance from the horses, and the jump crew is kept busy sandbagging the standards and trying to keep the course intact so that the competition can take place. In this class, the challenging triple combination (a series of three jumps closely spaced) was positioned on the long side of the arena. The approach involved making a left turn after landing from a jump set at the far end. Making the turn correctly is critical to positioning the horse to give him the best chance of clearing all three obstacles.

I prefer the monotone finish, which in my mind enhances the strong graphical elements of the composition and emphasizes the details of horse, rider and tack.

Left to the Triple Combination, sepia is available for purchase HERE

Nikon D4, 1/1000 sec at f/5.6, ISO 400, 280mm (200.0-400.0 mm f/4.0) lens.

Photo is copyrighted and registered with the US Copyright Office. Please respect.

Posted by Carol in California, USA
High Heels, sepia

High Heels, sepia

Here’s one for the equestrian crowd!  High Heels, sepia is a new addition to my online gallery and the first square format photo I’ve posted.

It’s fun to hang out at ringside with a big lens, trying to capture the action and excitement of Grand Prix Showjumping up close and personal. Here the horse is in a bit of trouble over a really big oxer. He’s making a herculean effort to  keep from hitting the rail, while his rider hangs on for the ride, releasing the reins to give her mount more freedom to solve the problem.

I love how the rider and horse are both showing the soles of their shoes!

High Heels, sepia is available for purchase HERE.

Nikon D4, 1/1000 sec at f/5.6, ISO 400, 280mm (80.0-400.0 mm f/4.5-5.6)

Photo is copyrighted and registered with the US Copyright Office. Please respect.

Posted by Carol in California, USA