TOOOOOO busy!

This week has been "too busy!" I haven't had a lot of time to work on tweaking photos from the Worlds Championship Horse show (saddlebreds) or to even finish up the Photos from the 2008 Kentucky State Fair Morgan show. I've also taken quite a few photos of my son and my cats.

I know that everyone takes photos of their pets, but my cats are black and I think that artistically, that makes them special. They are fantastic for making a photo look good in either color or black and white. Light on their coat is fascinating to me as are their faces and their movement. I swear that someday I'll be in the right place at the right time to catch a good picture of what I call "Kittypalooza". This is when my cats run after one another and playfully tackle eachother. Our rule is "no blood, no foul".

Above are photos of Sahara sleeping and of her watching me watch her.

I have a potential chance to do a farm shoot of Miniature Horses. I really hope that this opportunity pans out because I would LOVE to photograph them. I think that Miniature Horse are Absolutely adorable and I would love to own one someday!

The Worlds Champion Five Gaited Horse, "Breaking News"

The Worlds Champion Five Gaited Horse, "Breaking News", originally uploaded by Heather Abounader Photography.

This photo was taken at the 2008 Worlds Championship Horse show held simultaneously with the Kentucky State Fair. My Friends and I went to watch this show of elegant horses. The horse pictured is "Breaking News" this year's winner of the $100,000 Five gaited stake.

Lets try this again.

My signature obscured the hummingbird in the picture above. Here is the high res picture.

Perspective

Above are some more hummingbird pictures. One of them was taken as I snuck around the corner of our house this evening, hoping to get another picture of the hummingbirds. I couldn't get nearly as close though as I can when I'm in the house in the laundry room. I snapped a couple of pictures of one anyway, to show how tiny these birds really are. Even I forget after looking at so many pictures of them this summer.

Next Summer I am going to plant Red "Trumpet Honeysuckle" because those are a favorite of the hummingbird. I am lucky in that there is spot outside of the window where I could put in a planter or two of it and still get decent photos (I hope).

I am very much going to miss these guys when fall rolls around. There is nothing like the thrill of getting a good picture of a hummingbird without a feeder!!

I spent quite a bit of time this week at the "Worlds Championship Horse Show". This is "THE" show for Saddlebred Horses. Tomorrow night are the finals and I am lucky enough to be able to go!

I've started uploading pictures of the "2008 Kentucky State Fair Morgan Horse Show" on my website. I don't know if anyone will be interested in purchasing the photos but they'll be up there!

I'm also working on transferring the Stonyridge Retirement Horse Farm Photos to the smugmug site. I'm finding that after a second look at some of the photos, I'll be uploading a few that didn't make it before. April that runs the farm has invited me back. I think I'm going to make the trip when the leaves change colors.

I'll apologize in advance..

I don't normally put my son's photo on the internet because I want his life to be private. I also watch too much MSNBC. This photo however, doesn't really show his face but it does show his bright personality. He's mostly a happy baby but he's a fire sign so he has his moments.. This was taken by our front door this morning as the sun was shining through.

Relaxing Weekend

This weekend there wasn't a big rush to do anything which was nice. I was able to find a horse to photograph and my kitty, Sahara, was nice enough to pose under our new dining room table.

The horse that I photographed "lives" (as far as I know) in a field across from our local post office.

Our local Post office is a nice throwback to the days when everyone knew everyone and there was only ONE person behind the counter there. It's a one window affair that shares it's building with an ebay store. They are open from 8am - 10am on Saturdays and because of the low volume of people, are faster than the "big" post office in town. I really like going there to spend my shipping money because it helps keep the post office open and I like it when my money helps the local economy.

Across the post office is some sort of very old Grave Memorial (hard to read)in a field. In this field also lives the beautiful dappled grey horse above (I *think* he's either arabian or high percentage arabian.. or possibly Welsh pony) I've watched him grey out over the last couple of years. I wish that I had thought to bring my camera sooner to get his other grey stages.

This particular saturday morning, he was nice enough to pop his head out of those feed bins long enough to look at me and walk away. I don't know where the paint horse was. Hopefully he'll be around the next time I bring my camera with me to the post office.

In the second picture, is my kitty Sahara. This morning was a beautiful Sunday morning and the light was perfect while Sahara relaxed under our dining room table. As you can imagine, with a baby that is starting to crawl, any good, high, hiding spaces are heaven to my poor cats!

Busy!

I've actually been really busy over the last 10 days! Three horse shows and numerous other things!!

I went to the 2008 Shelbyville Horse Show, the 2008 Ky State Fair Quarter Horse Show (roping portion) and the 2008 KY state Fair Morgan show.

The Shelbyville horse show was just wonderful with my new lens! Although I REALLY wish it was a 70- 300mm 2.8 lens instead of just 200mm. I have two 70-300mm lenses but they are not even in the same League as the 70-200mm cannon 2.8 lens that I have now. They are no where near as crystal clear as it is. I'm definitely spoiled on lenses now. I'm going to have to get really good lenses from now on or I just won't be happy with the image quality. I learned alot about shooting into the sun too. You can do it but not everything will turn out well.

The roping show was great because it taught me about shooting images in Freedom Hall. Freedom hall is so much better lit than the Kentucky Horse Park Arena. It still has it's challenges though. I learned that I need an 800 ISO to get a good enough shutter speed to remotely capture any action. I also learned to not expect to get crisp, stopped action but to work with panning techniques to get moving images instead.

I haven't had the time to go through my Morgan Horse show images just yet so I don't know how I did on those.

I've also entered the "Capture Kentuckiana" photo contest put on by the local newspaper, The Courier Journal

I'm hoping against hope that one of my images will be good enough for the book. It seems like everyone will have at least one Image on the CD which is why I want to be in the book (as usual, I aim high! LOL~!)

http://capturekentuckiana.com/people/abounaderphoto

Please, out of the kindness of your heart, please vote for my images! If my images don't get votes, they drop out of the random vote pool and then I'll never get anything in the book! unfortunately though, you have to sign up for the website in order to vote. (yes, I think this is lame too but I think this is how they make sure that no one cheats)

Munchkin is now sitting up and crawling and he is into EVERYTHING! This is actually a great sign and I'm so pleased with his curiosity.


I've also been dealing with a touch of post partum depression. I've never been good about going out of the house and over the last three months I've been much worse. I'm seeing a counselor though so I will be much better in the future.


I day dream a lot about taking munchkin places and taking his picture there... Like taking him to the slugger museum or taking him to the park and taking his picture in front of well known Louisville Landmarks... Hopefully I can actually do that soon.. I think it would be adorable for his photo album.

Ropin Show! (More to come later today!)

Roadster Ponies

Roadster Pony