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.

Fly me to the Moon

Freezing cold weather and a brand new moon peaking out from behind the shadow of the earth drug me out into the night to get these shots. I took one at the proper exposure for a nice moon shot and the other is over exposed a bit so you can see the outline of the rest of the moon in the shadows. It was fun trying to figure out what settings to use on my camera to get just the right effects.





Today is Super Bowl Sunday!!!! We always have a big party and lots of fun with all of our friends. There is always way too much food, some drinking, a freindly bet and lots of visiting with our friends. It's a house full but it's danged FUN!

Now, on to something serious, if any of you are in need of a really nice, well broke, gentle horse let me know. I'm helping a neighbor find homes for some of his retired dude string horses.

Here We Go Again

Yes, yes I know there are a lot of people who wish they could get just a glimpse of some of the wildlife that we see here nearly every day but it doesn't make having them here all of the time any easier to deal with.



Every year one or two large herds of elk show up around our place. Fortunately, they favor the new green grass on our neighbor's fields but that doesn't stop them from paying a visit to our fields and taking down our fences as they come and go.

There is always a lead cow that chooses where the herd goes.


Then comes the rest of the cows, last years calves and the small bulls


Then the larger bulls bring up the rear. It's the same story every day.


This particular day I was feeling rather frisky as this herd headed straight towards my lower field so I grabbed my camera and made a mad dash for the closest vantage point I could muster without being spotted. Sneaking up on elk isn't rocket science mind you but it is harder then most people think it is. On this particular forray into wildlife photography I sprung my crotch climbing over the fence, tore my pants on the blackberries, lost my rubber boot in the boot sucking mud and poked my boob on a wayward branch. None-the-less in spite of my lungs heaving for air and my hands shaking from exhaustion I managed to get a few shots.

BUT, yes there is always a BUT in wildlife photography; the elk were MOVING and the lighting was less then ideal for shooting a moving object with a 300 zoom lense and shaking hands. Oh well. None of the shots are worth framing but they are better then what I've gotten in the past. At least this time I didn't feel like spiking my camera off the floor after I downloaded the photos.

Good bye for today elk. That's a big darned herd!

I'm hoping for some inspiration

I haven't been making very frequent entries lately for a couple of reasons. One is, I haven't been able to come up with a clever, entertaining topic. Another is, I haven't been out getting any wonderful photographs of anything. The good news is, I am only going to be working 1 day a week for the next month or two or three or four so I'll have a lot of time to go out searching for that perfect photo opportunity so stay tuned!

In the mean time, I'll entertain you with this cute picture of Mr. Piggelsworth and his buddy Doctor Doodle Duck.

Snow, EEKS!

I don't think I'll ever wish for a white Christmas again. EVER. We got burried in the snow, nearly 4 feet of it. Our power went out and didn't come back on until a couple of days after Christmas, it was out for six days. I didn't get to work for 3 weeks but I sure stayed busy trying to keep up with this place and all of the animals here.

To give you an idea of just how deep it got here is a picture of one of my fences, just the tops are showing and that is not a drift, it's that deep everywhere.



You can't even see Marlboro Man's junkers! Okay, that can be a good thing!


Toby kept getting covered in this annoying snow balls!


Before it got too deep the horses enjoyed the snow too.



Barns all around us were caving in including 6 indoor arenas just in my area. Of course that really made me nervous but luckily we were smart and had our barn fully engineered rather then just putting up an ag building. That meant that the building was engineered to withstand a 4 foot snow load. At the time I thought that was crazy, we'd never get that kind of snow, YEAH RIGHT! We had to spend over $6000.00 upgrading the trusses, perlins and beams to meet the county standards and boy was I ever glad that we did, it sure paid off this winter.

I tried to photograph the snow but when I was faced with endless white everywhere I had a really rad time capturing anything worthwhile. So here are a few weak attempts at being creative.