Fiesta of the Spanish Horse!

This past Saturday, May 5th, was the annual Fiesta of the Spanish Horse. This is an event that brings together some of the most beautiful horses in the world in one place, the LA Equestrian Center in Burbank, CA. This is quite a large place for horses and a wonderful place for a horse show. The show took place inside their large indoor arena, this was fine because there were so many people but created some problems when trying to take pictures. The show is packed full of some really cool stuff and is a really nice way to present this group of horses. The horses that perform in the show are all Spanish breeds including the Andalusian from Spain, the Paso Fino from Puerto Rico and the Peruvian Paso from Peru among others. The horses are asked to perform by either showing off their natural gaits, performing dressage or doing tricks which is very fun to watch, not to mention these horses are stunningly beautiful.

These horses are constantly in motion throughout the whole show which would require a faster shutter speed, more so because of the telephoto lens I was using requires a faster shutter when it is zoomed. Because the light was so low inside the indoor arena I had to shoot with a very high ISO, don’t get me wrong it was plenty to see the show with but not enough for the camera. The high ISO makes the sensor more sensitive to light, it also creates more noise on the image when the ISO gets higher. I chose to shoot in aperture priority and set it at 4, this is the most open my 70-200mm lens can get. Then I set it to ISO 800, my camera does go all the way up to ISO 1600 but I didn’t want my photos to be completely ruined by noise. We sat up in the general seating which is higher up from the arena and further away, my 70-200mm was perfect for this situation, it was almost like we had a front row seat without paying the extra hundred something dollars.

Even at a high ISO and a aperture set at 4 the shutter speed still could not go higher than 1/125 without underexposing. This shutter speed is not that fast for this situation so a lot of my images are not as crisp as I would have liked them to be. The photos also do have some noise, but with a little noise reduction software the pictures came out pretty good and I had a lot of fun taking them. This is a really great event that I would highly recommend to horse lovers and even non horse lovers, plus all proceeds go towards Cancer Research so next year head on over to the Fiesta!

Rim of the World Rally

This past Sunday April 29th, 2007 Jamie, some friends, and I went to the Rim of the World Rally held this year in Lancaster, CA. The event itself was small for a Rally type event. It consisted of a single stage dirt course loop inside the fairgrounds and an autocross course setup in the parking lot with cones. The autocross course was open to the public and for a small fee anybody could take their car and set a time. The event was sponsored by Subaru so they dominated the selection of cars at the event. Still a Toyota Matrix and a Lotus Elise got good times on the autocross and the dirt rally course featured everything from a Ford Ranger to a VW Rabbit.
I shot exclusively with our 70-200mm lens. There were times when I wish I had a longer lens. Still this lens worked well outside. The temperature was high and the sun was bearing down on us. Shade was hard to find so we didn’t stay long. Still we captured some nice images.