Sunday, June 8, 2014

Colorado Adventures

It was wonderful to get back to Colorado for my ninth trip to the Great American Horse Drive earlier this spring. We had a great group of photographers for our workshop although the cold and windy weather provided some challenges for both photographers and wranglers. We had constantly changing weather conditions from snow squalls, dramatic skies with lots of clouds to bright blue cloudless back drops - all in a matter of minutes!

Head wrangler Chuck Hummel did a masterful job wrangling cowboys, cowgirls and horses along with an awesome stage coach shoot, our workshop leader Scott Trees helped set up the shoots and as usual Mark Kettenhofen had his candy store of Nikon gear available for all photographers to play with. As always the drive was spectacular with the herd safely delivered to the home ranch for another year. Next year's drive is scheduled for the first weekend in May and you can be sure I will be back for more fun and games! Please go to this link to
 view all the images from this event and drop me an email for usage and licensing information. 

While in Colorado I also spent some time searching for birds in both the Craig and Walden areas and was richly rewarded with good views of Sharp Tailed Grouse, Swainson's Hawks, and White Pelicans among others. What a treat and wonderful way to spend time in nature. I have a gallery of Colorado birds available for your viewing pleasure here.
No trip to Colorado is ever complete without a visit to the vast and magnificent Sand Wash Wild Horse Management area to look for the wild horses there. The horses there were healthy and active with new babies and plenty of stallion activity.

 It will be another busy summer, stay tuned for photos from a very exciting trip coming up soon, and in August I am looking forward to returning to the Powderhorn Ranch in Wyoming for our annual girls' retreat there. It is always a pleasure to spend time here with the True family and their beautiful horses in a spectacular setting and an extra treat to share it with fellow photographers. It was really special to me to have one of my photos of head Powderhorn cowgirl Hailey True featured on the cover of America's Horse recently! View this gallery for an idea of the photo ops that will be available to us. If you would like more information on joining us for the retreat please drop me an email. I hope to see you there for a truly special experience!

In July I will be leading my very popular Basics of Equine Photography online course again. If you feel like you could use some help improving your equine photography skills then this is the course for you. We will explore everything from the very basics of camera technicals to capturing successful horse conformation, head shots and action shots. This is a fun, intensive and educational course which you will not find anywhere else. I hope you will join us!