Orkney Pony Club Mounted Games

The above picture was one of a couple of ours to make it into The Orcadian newspaper in Orkney this week.

The team from Orkney Pony Club qualified for the Horse of the Year show – which will be televised later in year.

Pony Club Games Zone Finals at Lanark

A long and very wet Saturday at the Pony Club Mounted Games finals in Lanark. These were qualifiers for the Horse of the Year show, so a big occasion for all involved.

It was the first time I’d photographed mounted games, and it was a bit of a challenge – it is quite a bit less predictable than showjumping or dressage, and everything happens very fast.  There were also just two of us to capture six lanes of flying pony.

But I was constantly amazed and impressed by what these guys can do on a horse.

Pony Club Mounted Games

Life as an event photographer isn’t always easy – but then neither is taking part.  It was a very wet and very wild day today at the Linlithgow & Stirlingshire Pony Club One Day Event at Dalmeny.

I was just covering the showjumping – and yes at one point it was so bad that everyone ran for cover in the nearest horsebox.

And yet we also had some beautiful weather  – a proper Scottish summers day.

Lanark & Upperward Pony Club Cross-Country 2010

A lovely day sitting in a warm field near Douglas in Lanarkshire shooting the LUPC  Cross-Country.  Or at keast it was lovely once the morning drizzle let up.

Lanark & Upperward Pony Club Cross-Country 2010

Fife Hunt Pony Club ODE at Scone

I was photographing the showjumping at the Fife Hunt Pony Club ODE at Scone today.  They had a lot of competitors which made for a long day, but it all seemed to go off very well.

Fife Hunt Pony Club ODE at Scone

Adventure Art will be attending the Fair City Dog Training Club Agility Show at Scone Palace on the 9th of May – Saturday only – to photograph the agility competition.

I won’t be able to cover more than one ring at a time, so if you are not in that ring and would like a shot of your dog competing, please let me know when and where you will be on.  Similarly if you have any special requests e.g. your dog in the weaves or contact equipment rather than jumping, please ask and I’ll see what I can do.

I’ll also be taking some portraits between and after classes, so if you would like a portrait shot of your dog (with or without rosettes!) please come and speak to me to arrange a suitable time.  Portraits at events are taken on the same basis as all other event photos – you have no obligation to buy, just purchase the shots you like from the website as normal.

If you would like to arrange a private portrait shoot on another day for your dogs (and you can combine with some friends if you wish), again please come over for a chat or drop me an email.

A lovely Saturday spent at the Kingdom of Fife Dog Agility Show held at the Lomond Centre in Glenrothes.

I was shooting event photographs of the agility, and also got to see my own dog Nevis competing.  Nevis is an old hand at modelling (if not agility) – he always has his eye on the camera.

With the nice weather, there was loads of light and so for a change I wasn’t having to shoot at the limits for my camera.  This gave me the flexibility to get a really high shutter speed to freeze the dog’s movements (about 1/1000 of a second), yet keep a decent aperture (f5.6-8) to ensure a reasonable depth of field.

There is a bit of a trade-off with depth of field when photographing dog agility though – more is great because you will get more dogs in focus at the critical point of the jump. The downside is that all the extraneous background clutter (other jumps, spectators etc) also has more chance of being in focus and distracting from the subject.

The small dogs are amazing to watch – they seem to jump many multiples of their own height.

In between classes, I managed to fit in a few quick portrait sessions – this one with a proud dad and three of his pups..

The sales report from my stock agency today highlighted two images sold for a UK newspaper usage.  The reports usually don’t include the name of the client, and can be a bit vague on dates of usage, but after a bit of digging around on the web I managed to track them down to the The Independent on Saturday 10th January.

These shots were taken at an ice-climbing competition, the Gorzderette, in Champangy-le-haut, France.  Myself and Neil were taking part for most of the day, but there was still plenty of time for pictures.  The two the paper have chosen are not actually my favourites – I prefer this one:

When I was at Uni The Independent was my favourite paper, and it was my greatest ambition to get some photos in the paper – it was then at the pinnacle of classy photo-journalism. I think their standards have dropped some since then, but still – another ambition ticked!  Unfortunately now that I’ve had a lot of photos published over the years, my first thought was not

‘Wow, I’ve got a picture in The Independent‘

it was more

‘Wow, The Independent doesn’t pay much, does it?’

The Linlithgow & Stirlingshire Pony Club had another successful event at the SNEC this weekend – this time it was Dressage, with qualifiers for Dengie in Novice and Open.

There were some superb looking horses and ponies taking part. Although dressage photography can be pretty difficult, some of these horse and rider combinations made it easy.

More photos in the event photography gallery.

We popped along to help out at the dog show at Howe Country Centre as both our border collies are currently in agility training, and Nevis is due to compete in his first serious competitive show next month.

I decided to take some dog agility photos while I was there – it was fantastic to watch!

From a photographic point of view dogagility events are much harder to shoot than showjumping – dogs are so much smaller and faster than horses, but also much less predictable. When you look at showjumping course, it is very easy to predict exactly which line a horse is going to take, there is a pretty well defined spot where a horse will take off, and there is an almost imperciptle point where a horse will almost hang in the air waiting for its photograph to be taken.

Dogs – well, they make their own rules. They might take off right underneath the jump, or they might take off 4 feet before it. They might take the shortest line through the corner of the jump, or they might rely on their speed and take any line which fits. They might be looking towards the next jump, or they might be looking back towards their handler to see what’s happening next. All of which makes the photographer’s job much more difficult – if it wasn’t hard enough already trying to photograph a small, fast-moving object in poor light.

But I’ve been doing this for a while now, and I’m getting a good handle on how to successfully photograph dog agility events. We got some great shots on the day, and I’m looking forward to Nevis’ big competition in April.