Fiesta of the Spanish Horse 2008

A Noble Event

Every year one event brings together excitement and horses and fund raising for a good cause. All the proceeds from each years event goes to the American Cancer Society, the USC Norris Cancer Center, and the Roy and Patricia Disney Cancer Center. The Extravaganza is where the best acts and the most polished Spanish horse breeds are shown off. Photographing this event is challenging. This year we sat in the box seats to get a close look. The Equidome is lit inside but it isn’t bright enough for say ISO 100 film or that setting on a Digital camera. Jamie and I shot ISO 800 film and shot digitally in both 800 and 1600 modes. This was in an effort to keep the shutter speeds above 1/90^th of a second.

All the Excitement

The event is very exciting all the way through. We saw trick riders who rode their horses while hanging off the side of the saddle upside down or while standing on the saddle while using no hands. One of the two trick riders even swung in front of their horse to the other side and got back on. The crazy thing is the horses steer themselves when the riders are doing these tricks. So both horse and rider have to trust each other.

The other exciting thing to see is when the horses are taught to jump straight up in the air from a standstill. This is called a capriole. It’s not something you would see if you’ve been to a thousand horse shows but each year you can see it at the Fiesta. Shooting such an act is difficult as you can imagine. The photographer on the floor of the arena had a powerful strobe. Being in the stands meant not being afforded that option. Therefore we had to rely on a high ISO and a quick response on the shutter. If our camera’s had any shutter lag once the shutter had been pressed we would miss the shot. That is the thing I love about our XT and the Canon A2E I was shooting film with. Both of these cameras have little to no shutter lag.

“Awww, how cute!”

Every year the Fiesta trots out the newborn foals with their mothers. This year one of them was only 5 days old! The reaction of course is unanimous. “Awww, how cute”, is what I hear from the whole audience. Taking this picture wasn’t hard at all. Any shot would do but I think this shot on the right demonstrates the interaction between foal and mare especially well.

I could write on for days about all the wonderful acts you can see at this show. I can’t show them all here though so be sure to head over to the Gallery to check out all the photos. We put them under the Horses category.

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.

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!

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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