no luck taking pictures of the cutting competition last night.

I'm not a fortuneteller but even I can predict that a new horse will soon be appearing in this young families future.

Another beautiful day today, I can't believe my luck.

I didn't go into the gun show they're having at the fairgrounds today, I walked over there and the place was packed. Not wanting to deal with the crowds, my almost total disinterest in anything gun related anymore, and the rules against taking pictures at a gun show, made my decision to turn around and walk back home an easy one.

I walked over to the cutting competition last night just about dark in hopes of getting some better pictures than I've been getting in the daytime and even though I had a great time watching the event, I wasn't very happy with the pictures I took. Even though the event was lit up well enough for people to see what was going on it was still way too dark for a camera to see very well.

There are several things you can do in a situation like that and I tried them all and a picture would get a little better in some ways and worse in others. It's easy to take a picture in a very dark place if nothing is moving or moving very slowly, it's easy to take a picture of things that are moving if there's plenty of light. But at the cutting competition it was very dark by camera standards, and the horses and riders were moving very fast which is a double whammy that's really hard to overcome.

A flash is the normal solution for that kind of problem but if I had frightened a horse while trying to use a flash I'm pretty sure these cowboys would've flung me into the arena and had the herd of cattle stampede over me until I fully understood the depth of my stupidity. So all in all my daylight pictures aren't very good but they are better than the night time pictures.

                                      theboondork

Usually with old age comes wisdom, but sometimes old age shows up by itself.

These steers aren't exactly couch potatoes, running is just about their only defense against predators so the horse has to work pretty hard to keep this steer away from the safety of the herd.

The next contestant rides slowly into the arena, not to a stony silence but a lot of hooting, hollering, and shouts of encouragement by the other contestants sitting on their horses outside the arena. Obviously concentrating on the job at hand, or maybe the $5000 purse that's paid out on this one event.