Lovely Foggy Fall Mornings are my Favorite Time for Pictures

This morning the sun was just beginning it daily rise over the hilltops spreading warm rays across the pastures and onto the fog that was hanging over the mountains like a warm blanket. This is my favorite time to go out with my camera to see what I can capture. The lighting that the early sun and provides is absolutely wonderful and the fog provides unique photo effect opportunities. In this photo, I was thrilled to allow the fog to blur out the background that I would normally do by adjusting the aperture setting on my camera.



I know, it’s a boring photo but be patient I am going somewhere with this.

In this next photo, I wanted to capture the colors in the black walnut tree and allow the sun to have a part so I set my aperture wide open to catch a bit of the suns rays but I didn’t want the sky blown out so I used my spot metering and metered on the fog and yippee the blue sky came in just like I wanted it.



Then, if you put the fog, the sun, the fall colors all together and add an interesting subject matter you end up with a nice shot like this.



See? I told you I was going somewhere!

Cabin Fever

Two weeks ago I broke my ankle. It was one of those stupid accidents that just happen no matter how careful you try to be. I have a water trough blocking a gap in the fence where there should be a small gate that was never installed. Rather then walk all the way to the other end of the barnyard, I climbed over the water trough to get quick access to the horses and put on their fly nets in the morning. When I climbed back out and jumped down I landed wrong, my ankle twisted and I heard a loud SNAP along with intense pain. I lay there awhile skirming around and moaning from the pain hoping it was like all of the other times I've twisted my ankle and it would just be okay after a minute or so. Unforunately that wasn't the case so I screamed for John to come help me. I yelled to him that I thought I had broken my ankle, he thought I said one of the horses had a broken ankle so he went back into the house and brought out a gun. I'm sure glad he didn't shoot me! He brought the car around so he could take me to the hospital, that is when poor Riley got scared. He screamed to his grandpa, "Don't run over my Grandma!!!" The poor little mushy boy. :)

At the hospital they did xrays and a CT scan, sure enough it was broken. They sent me home with a boot thingy and instructions to go see a surgeon about pinning me back together. Thank GOD the surgeon said I didn't have to have surgery and didn't put on a cast so here I sit with a 6 week sentence of no weight on the foot. I go back to the doctor Wednesday for new xrays and hope that my sentence will be shortened by a bit because I'm going start raving MAD being locked up in this house.

Here it is two days after the break. I really don't think it looks all that bad but what do I know.


That's it, my life is so boring and uneventful now that I have nother more to ad so I'll just end this post with a photo that I took BEFORE I broke my stupid ankle.

Photographing a Wedding

My look a like niece got married this past Saturday and had asked me to be the photographer. I tried to talk her into hiring a professional but she insisted that I would do fine. I ran around like a crazy person for the entire ceremony and took almost 1100 photos. I'm exhausted but I think I got so good photos, I sure hope she likes them!

I got a couple of new pets to add to the menagerie

Vanessa is a very freindly little Nigerian Dwarf with a silly personality



Bindi is a sweet little blue eye Nigerian Dwarf. She's a little shy but is comming around slowley.


These little goats like to follow me all around the ranch and look for trouble to get into.

The Building of a Box Culvert

Last weekend Dad and I accompanied Ernie, Scott and Jeff up into the woods to pack in the supplies and construct a box culvert to provide a temporary creek crossing along the new trail being built for the Mule Skinner's Memorial Day Poke Ride.

Here, we are loading up Ernies miles with the supplies we needed to back in. In this photos, Cody is being loaded with the lumber.


Here, I provide a nice view of Coday all loaded up and ready to go


Whisky gets to pack in some of the additional supplies we need, chainsaw, buckets, lunch etc.


Chex waits patiently while the mules get all packed up.


The mules are all loaded up, we head out to a hillside to grab some rock


This is the area before we did any improvements. It doesn't look like much but we worry that after 500 horses cross, it'll be a muddy mess.


Scott was the lucky nail straightener guy. Remember, RECYCLE!


While Ernie works on preparing the creek bed, Scott and Jeff start assembling the box


Putting the final touches on the box


The box is set over the creek flow and tamped down into place


The creek flow is adjusted just a little more to make sure it flows through the box


Some large branches are placed on each side of the box to help stabelize it


Ernie has these handy paniers that open from the bottom, this made it really easy to unload the gravel right over the culvert


Ernie tromps around on the fished product to make sure it is solid


Finally we are finished with our project and head back to the trailers

Finally a moment for ME

I never in my wildest dreams that my rescue would get so incredibly big and busy that I would no longer have the time to enjoy my photography hobby and keeping my personal blog updated. This morning however, I did take just a few minutes to grab my camera and head out for some photo opportunities.

Here are a couple of my roosters. They are really shy so getting a photo of them is difficult but this morning I was sneaking up on some elk and managed to surprise he roosters in the process!

By the time I got done photographing the roosters, the stupid horses had discovered the elk and chased them down to the bottom of the field near the road. I high tailed it to the house and screamed a Dad to GET IN THE CAR, NOW! The poor guy was in the middle of shaving and had no shoes on but I sounded serious so he scrambled and off we went to our lower field. I spotted the elk again and they were in my woods right next to the road all set up for a perfect photo opportunity. I stopped the car, rolled down the window, did the 4 point check on the camera (shutter speed, ISO, F-stop etc) and prepared to take the shot when Dad started talking. GAAAA!!!!! At that point it became very clear to me why my Dad was never much of a successful hunter instead of hand signals he screams out, “There’s the elk!”

They ran off, here is a photo of their retreat back across my hay field.


Oh well, it was fun anyway.

It's Been Very Busy Here

I haven't had the time to post in here lately because my rescue has been taking up all of my time. Make sure you click on my rescue link and take a look at all of the new horses that we have in.

My Dad is moving back over to this side of the mountain and will be living with my sister Jill. This will give me lots of opportunity to spend quality time with him.