Photos from the July Show

I overwhelmed The Boy with video responsibilities at the July show, so I've been waiting for the pro photos to be posted in order to take a peek at a few stills.  I was really happy to see eighty four shots posted of us, since one can't hide bad habits in more than one or two carefully selected frames.


A picture's worth a thousand words which means I don't need to spend 84,000 words describing how I need to sit down and back, and get Prairie off her forehand (see - Canter).  But, it's always nice when things are consistent, and I didn't see anything in the pictures that I didn't feel during the ride, or read in the judge's comments.  Sadly there are no fantastico-amazing snaps of our "10" lengthening, but there are a few goodies, and since I spent over an hour of "office time" oogling the photographer's work, I opted to get a couple digital prints.  They aren't spectacular moments per se, but they're a good baseline of where we are at and frankly the download fee is worth having 84 shots to stare at and scrutinize.

Here's the two shots I opted to get:

Cantering! not *totally* on our forehand...

I'm abusing my inside rein here, but I really liked the picture..

The B& W on that second pic is my own picasa tweaking... mostly because I can't stand how brown my black horse looks.  Something about the color filter really makes her look much more bleached than she is in real life... argh.

There were a few more good ones that I like, but don't want to remember forever - these were two of the finalists that I might still splurge on (if I find some change in the couch cushions)

I love her legs here (so maybe I'll buy it), but The light is funky and I don't like how her braids are casting shadows... but look at that hind end! That's as balanced as we get right now.

Another good trot moment from our second test..

You can see the full gallery at Karen Wegenhenkel's site.  I clicked through some of the other entries and she got some pretty great shots given hard shadows on the arena.  She was at the first show as well, and hopefully she'll be there for last two in the show series!