Intercoms and Squirrels

Every morning since the time change, munchkin has been waking up at 5am. I hear every little peep that he makes through our excellent baby monitor. So I wake up at 5am, and tell myself that he's ok and safe and then go back to sleep (Or at least try to) until 6am.

We wait until 6am to get him because that is "THE SCHEDULE" and I keep reading how every baby should be on a schedule. Besides, we can barely get him to stay awake past 7pm and if we wake him earlier and put him to bed earlier, I'll end up waking every day at 4am instead.

Our house has a built in intercom system, but every time there is rain with lightning it gets frazzled and only half of it works. The half that isn't working right now, is the speaker in our master bedroom. For some reason, my husband refuses to call the company that installed it and bought a baby monitor so that we could sleep in the master bedroom and still hear the baby.

Ok, he bought the baby monitor for my parents to use when they're watching munchkin but we've commandeered it for our bedroom.

The REALLY Funny part about the baby monitor (the store bought one) is that it picks up a local radio station. And I don't mean, a little bit of noise faintly in the background. I mean you can hear it all plainly. The later in the night it is, the more clearly you can hear the radio station. The reason for this is because our "high end" neighborhood is built about 5 blocks (as the crow flies) from the stations Gigantic radio tower. The Tower has been there since the 70's (maybe longer) and our Neighborhood has been here since the early 2004's. So it's really not the radio stations fault.

To remedy this, my husband, who is really an exceptionally smart dude, has put aluminum foil around the upstairs portion of the baby monitor (the transmittor) and the Reciever in our bedroom. And you know what? It's worked. The static and the radio station isn't as loud as it used to be.

I'd take a picture of it but the baby is sleeping right now and if I wake him, I don't get to pollute the internet with my witty drivel. :-)

The First three photos above are obviously taken at the 2008 Worlds Championshp Horse show in Louisville, KY during the $100,000 Five Gaited Stake. During the class, they strip the horses to take a look at their conformation. Now the points given during this portion of the class don't factor in a LOT, but it drags the class out so that everyone gets their money's worth. I definitely did.

The Last horse photo is of the winner "Breaking News" performing the gait, the "rack" which is an "artificial" gate taught to him by his trainer and he's really good at it. (obviously)

The Fourth picture is of a squirrel, doing squirrel things in one of the trees out back. Although the lens I used doesn't have the "foo" to get one of those great, close up, pictures showing every hair in his fuzzy hide, I think that the overall feeling is pretty nice.

The fifth picture is a reflection of the trees on the water in the creek in my back yard. Some day I'll have to blather on about why we're in the house and how much I love my back yard, but I'll spare you today.

More American Saddlebred Horses

I still have another 350 to go but these are a few that I pulled out to put up on the blog...

More Beauties from The Worlds Championship Horse Show.

There is something so elegant about American Saddlebred Horses. Even the ones that don't have their tails done for a show, exude an elegant presence.

I took about 1500 photos over the three days I was at the 2008 Worlds Championship Horse show. I'm just now getting to some of them because I had more lucrative show photos to get through first. I"m really happy with how some of these turned out even though I was in the "nosebleed" Seats at Freedom Hall in Louisville, Ky.

Mistakes = Learning

Used to be that I was really afraid of making mistakes. I was so insecure that when I made a mistake, and someone tried to help me by constructively pointing it out, I would get all bent out of shape. Now I know that if someone actually takes the time to constructively point out my mistake (and I of course value their opinion) It is a gift.

Yesterday, I sat on the wrong side of the polo field for lighting. I used a shutter speed of 500 and let it pick it's own fstop. It mostly used f4 - f5.6 with an occasional 7.1 or even 11 thrown in. This made most of my photos very contrasty. On the one hand, it wasn't really what I was going for. On the other hand, the photos look kinda cool! So I'll be popping that tidbit into my brain for creative photography in the future.

I also tried a lot of panning to show movement.

Post office horses

On Thursday evening, I ended up going "horse lookin" after all. I was having a "moment" of feeling creative and a bit irritated. I do sometimes have a typical "artists temperment" and I get all moody. Sometimes this works to my favor. I left the house right around sunset and drove by the tiny post office on "main street" Eastwood. As I mentioned previously, there is a monument of some sort within a horse pasture right across the street. This time the same dappled grey horse (a mare I found out) that I had photographed last time was there along with her buddy a flaxen chestnut pinto. (forgive me, I get tobiano, overo, tovero etc confused so I'm not exactly sure what this horse was) Both horses are probably 15hands or under. I "think" that the grey is a welsh of some sort because her head is not arab-y at all. Her ears are very tippy though. (wish they'd brush her mane but it does make photographing her interesting)

Although there wasn't as much sunset sunlight on the pair as I had hoped, I did manage to use the light to my advantage. I accidently had my ISO wayyy up on 800 because I was shooting pictures of my son indoors earlier in the day but the 800 ISO worked out fine. The one problem that I find with my Rebel XTI 400D is that it's images are a lot noiser than I would prefer. The ISO up on 800 certainly didn't help that fact but it gave me the shutter speed that I needed while using a F7.1 aperature.

I didn't get very many images of the Pinto that I liked tremendously but as usual, the grey's coat reflected the light beautifully. Note to self, don't photograph colored horses in the shade.. LOL!

The Grey has lost a lot of her dark coloring over the course of the summer and I find it interesting that she has lightened so much. I'm glad that I got a photograph or two of her while she still had that dark dappled grey coat.

I would like to try to go shoot some polo tomorrow but my poor hubby is ill so I'll probably end up staying home. (we don't want the baby to get sick too).

Next weekend is the "St James Court Art Show" which is the second largest art fair in the country. 7 or 8 full city blocks of every kind of art you could imagine! It is simultaneously inspiring and overwhelming to me. I hate going by myself but I find that I don't normally have anyone to go with. If I get to talk about the art with someone, It helps me stave off being overwhelmed. I may try to bring munchkin with me but we'll see.

I do daydream about having a booth at St James. I can never make enough miniature tack to sell in a booth so I'm hoping that someday I can sell my photographs instead.

I would dearly like to get up into my studio this weekend so wish me luck!