My how time flies. Here we are in December and I'm just getting around to editing photographs I took on September 30th at the fall cattle drive at the Ladder Ranch.
Looking at these images took me back. It was a rainy day, and there was a chill in the northern Colorado mountain air close to the Wyoming border. I remember feeling a bit more adrenalin coursing through my body, because this was going to be the first time I would try to shoot while riding a horse.
I had some experience shooting from a mule on our trip to Baja in March, but mules and horses are very different animals and the mare I was given was easily half again as tall as the mule I had ridden. In addition, I decided that I wanted to be able to shoot both with wide angle and long lenses, so I set up one camera with a 17-40mm lens, and another with a 70-200mm. Mounting in itself seemed like a formidable task.
But it was a great day. Yeah, there were those times where my horse decided to gallop when the two cowboys I was with would spur there horses on. No amount of firm words and pulling on the reins would stop her from keeping up with her buddies. But for the most part, she seemed to know when I put the reins over the saddle horn that she needed to take it easy so I could shoot with both hands on the camera.
More to come, but here's the first image I was attracted to.