Colorado Horse Park 3 Day Event

The weather was perfect for the Colorado Horse Park 3 Day Event. No blazing heat, no hail, no rain, no dark and moody overcast skies. After a 1.5 year long hiatus from shooting eventing in Colorado I returned to shoot the 3 day event and horse Trials in May of 2008 as the official photographer. The show was managed by Jeffray Rying of Galisteo, New Mexico's, Goose Downs Farm with Deeda Randal being her right hand.

Long days, great weather, beautiful venue, superb horses and fine show management. What more could a horse photographer want? There were 4 dressage rings going all at once on Friday and 2 Stadium rings on Sunday requiring me to bring in one of my good friends, Amy Cody, to help me shoot all three days and cover everyone. Amazingly enough, and a true testament to fine show management, all the dressage and stadium rings finished within 1/2 hour of each other on their respective days. The Cross Country phase ran on Saturday from 7:30 am until a bit after 6pm with very close to zero delays. There was a minor snafu in the photographer's camp, however, like the complete shutdown of my main camera which forced the use of my back-up camera. I have always had back-up equipment with me but never had to use it before in all of the 10+ years I have been doing this. I sure am glad I have never gotten complacent about faithfully packing that mostly unused equipment around with me. Whew!

Together, Amy and I shot well over 6400 images in 3 days. That averages out to approximately 25 images per horse with the 260 horses that competed. Of course, there were lots of candids as well and after editing, right around 4,000 of the images were posted as proofs on the website. It took about 10 long days to go through them all, do minor post processing and cropping and then get them uploaded.

All in all, it was a great and fun long weekend. Thank you Jeffray for having me. Thank you Amy for being low-maintenance, experienced, and fun to work with hired help! Thank you, competitors, for making my job possible!