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!

Even More Horse Photos!

That’s right I’ve put up new horse photos in the gallery. Bryan and I recently went to a horse show and took lots of photos. For those of you who are not into horses, I’m sorry for overwhelming you with horse photos but I can’t help but be fascinated with these beautiful creatures so there will definitely be more horse pictures to come. I hope you all enjoy them!

New Horse Photos!

I recently got the chance to visit Hart Ranch in Corona and photograph their beautiful horses. Check out the photos I took in the Horse Gallery.

Acura L.A. Bike Tour 2007

This past Sunday, March 4th to be exact, was the annual Acura L.A. Bike Tour which took place in downtown Los Angeles. The actual course is a little over 22 miles and begins in Exposition Park right next to the Coliseum and ends on Exposition Boulevard across the street from USC. Bryan participated in this year’s ride, he also participated in last years when the course was different. The actual ride begins at 5:50 in the morning, which means we had to wake up at 3:00 am to get there in time so Bryan could be towards the front of the pack. The pack by the way is quite large, about 18,000 cyclists ride in this particular tour, it is after all “America’s Favorite Ride.” It’s definitely not my favorite, only because it’s in the middle of “ghetto town USA” and driving in L.A. makes you crazy. Anyway besides that it’s quite fun to be apart of, and lots of fun to watch. 

So after Bryan went off on his merry way to bike the streets of Los Angeles I walked toward the finish line on Exposition Boulevard. I decided to visit USC while I waited patiently for Bryan to return. USC has some beautiful architecture and is definitely a great photo spot. After about 50 minutes the first cyclist crossed the finish line, so I decided to position myself across the street to wait for Bryan. As I waited I took pictures of many cyclists, I had my camera set in shutter priority mode because I wanted to be able to catch the fast moving cyclists. The fastest shutter speed I could set it at to make sure the camera didn’t underexpose the image was 1/100, not a fast shutter speed but combined with the panning technique I was able to stop the motion pretty well. Obviously with a faster shutter speed I could have really frozen the action but panning really gave me the effect I was looking for.

After about an hour and a half Bryan crossed the finish line. Around that same time the other thousands of bikes were also finishing which made it impossible for me to cross the street, however I decided to risk my life and run across the street to celebrate with Bryan. This is a great bike ride for beginning to avid cyclists and is a great event to photograph, however if you’re looking for nicer scenery there are many other bike tours in the Southern California area that you should check out. Bryan will probably be participating in a few of those tours as well. We will continue to post more info and photos on any upcoming bike tours we participate in.

For more pictures from the Acura L.A. Bike Tour please visit the Gallery.

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