In All His Winter Glory

Jasper has been moved to a pen with an attached barn. He's by himself and I'm hoping with all he can eat grass hay, plus a couple flakes of alfalfa a day, plus Equine Sr., oats, and Cool Calories he'll start to gain some weight. He has one neighbor, a little black Arab named Monsoon, that he keeps an eye on. As in stands at the 8 feet of fence that separate their corrals and watches his every move. All day.

He can trot and maybe even canter a little in his corral, but he can't stretch out. Today he had been in there for two whole days when I let him out in the arena... I didn't cluck once or twirl a rope. I stood in the middle and snapped pictures as he ran himself so hard at the end his sides were heaving with rapid, shallow breaths. It took 30 minutes to cool him out, and he wasn't dry, but man all that running must have felt good.

PHOTO 101

I'm taking a black and white film class at the local community college. We're supposed to figure out how to use all of the manual settings- how to set the aperture and shutter speed and man is it confusing. Then we process the film to make our own negatives, and make prints from the negatives. The prints take me between 1-2 hours each, it's a loooooooong process to get it right. Apparently if you have good (correctly exposed) negatives the printing process is easier because you don't have to go back and correct so much. I'm hoping I get to discover what it's like to have correctly exposed negatives by the end of the class.

I think my scanner has some gunk on it, woops.

My favorite subjects, of course, are the horses...

Portland Meadows, jockeys up...

This one is blurry, partially due to the fact it was taken from behind a chain link fence. Also, the film speed was wrong for a dark, overcast day. I put it in anyway because it tells part of a story.

The finish line. The ground shook, hard to explain the raw power and adrenaline galloping by.

Cardi, owned by Jessica Wisdom

Diamond, owned by Jessica Wisdom.


Valley Chapel Farms

Seaside Oregon

With the enlarger: Focus on owl, focus on reflection.