HDR Photography
Rain brings spontaneous desert symmetry breaking: some areas become rivers and streams, while others stay high and dry. La Quinta Cove brings hiking trails into this equation. Looking high over the landscape, those trails and dry streambeds may be hard to distinguish—until the rain comes. In the distance, just above the tan tanks on the left of the image, the Salton Sea serves as a reminder of how water and the desert interact.
Progressing through important summer horse show days finally brings us to the verge of Pony Finals. To whatever extent the event was subdued in 2020 and 2021, 2022 brought back the full experience.
Around Stonewall Farm, Pony Finals wouldn’t have been possible without the work of a whole team of young equestrians. Catching them in a rare group shot felt like a rare alignment of planets.
Naturally, that was because of the amount of time spent ferrying to and from the Rolex ring. As in past years, golf carts play a key role.
In the ring, young riders have time to school and explore the space before they return for scored trips beginning the next day. Behind this squad, the VIP sits empty.
There’s a mix of high stakes and informal context that makes this day before Pony Finals fascinating.
The formal riding clothes that will make up the next few days, the spectators in the stands, the judges, the jumps—all are absent.
There’s even time to stop for a snack…
…Or for a group photo.
The huge expanse of the Rolex’s footing makes for some remarkably neutral backgrounds. Details in horse and rider are all that stand out.
Back at the barn, pony after pony goes out for schooling or trials.
Will awaits a pony on the way back from the ring.
Megan gets Piper’s horse out of his stall…
And grooms him.
Piper heads off to ride.
The schooling ring is as busy as the Rolex.
In the warm-up, young riders focus on perfecting their rides.
Piper in the ring—with some good advertising.
“Maybe the real Pony Finals champions were the friends we made along the way.”
Mountains and hillsides in Coachella Valley are a rocky, scrubby desert so long as they stay sufficiently sloped; the moment they reach the flat ex-lake valley floor, the housing developments begin.
Radiant summer sunset light showered over a rustic farm is all well and good, but a relaxed pony munching grass in the foreground really draws the eye to what matters.
The path at right is a fairly treacherous, dusty way up to the top of this hill; it’s the one I took last year to capture images like this one. Flying to the top with my drone is, by comparison, a bit less strenuous.
Summer dawns are calm, gentle times in Midway, Kentucky—and when we’re in town for horse shows, you can bet we see a lot of them. I find it satisfying that the aerial view is just as relaxing and bucolic.
The hot day before the Kentucky Summer Classic was perhaps not in need of a literal warm up, but a warm-up day it nonetheless had.
Piper Klemm and her trainer, Emily Elek, were busy on their phones. Don’t call Emily—just text her if you want a response.
There’s always a need for more cold water bottles.
Will and Papaya receiving coaching from Bob Crandall…
…Before putting that advice into action.
I’m always on the lookout for a pony with a positive attitude and unique coat.
Out: Hermes belts. In: Gucci belts. I guess everyone watched the movie.
Grooms make all of this possible. I went with a deep depth of field here to allow for the big difference in size without either groom or rider being lost to bokeh.
Smiles like this are why we’re all there at the show.
Our summer rental cottage in rural(ish) Kentucky provides my wife’s favorite benefit: waking up to horses in the back yard. There’s no better coffee companion than an equine friend.
My trips to this hill last year were constrained by the limitations of gravity; bringing my drone with me this year opened up whole new vistas and geometries. The artificial nature of this water retention area is far more apparent when view from the air.
Another multiphoto set, this one from the final days of Kentucky Summer at the Kentucky Horse Park. We’ll start off with Dr. Piper Klemm showing Reuben and looking appropriately happy about it.
Team Stonewall Farm is looking pretty gregarious.
Will, on the other hand, looks surprised—and should probably be wearing a helmet.
This wide, dramatic view of riders in the ring, the gate in, and folks sheltering from the rain outside is made all the more dramatic by the one young woman with no rain gear. Mysterious!
We’ll finish as we began, with Piper looking excited to be riding Reuben.
A lot happens around the Kentucky cottage when we’re home from a show, but I have to admit that a pair of vultures drying out after a sudden thunderstorm in the top of a tree with a rainbow behind them isn’t what I was expecting…
This look from Papaya through the trees was pretty profound but still not really what I was expecting…
Quiet grazing in a sunset-lit paddock is perhaps closer to expectations, but this idyllic, Miyazaki-esque view still surprised me with the sense of warm summer calm.
Like a child’s legos, spilled out onto the floor until they reach the wall of the room, the sprawl of Coachella Valley reaches from one mountain range to the other.
Of course, when that sprawl does reach the edge, modern California’s land conservation kicks in and a hard barrier appears between homes and desert.
Today marks the start of the spring semester at many colleges and universities. A wistful look back at winter break and its associated festivities seemed appropriate.
I found myself returning to one of my earliest Decaseconds posts (almost exactly 11 years ago) as I updated my Top 32 album on Flickr—the digital portfolio where I display my best (or simply favorite) photographs. Finding “Waves and Rocks Dwarf Man” in that set, I saw both the excellent light and composition that my old Nikon had captured in 2011, as well as all of the places where my choices in processing the original image now left my unsatisfied. Rather than simply reprocessing that original image, I went back to the folder of camera raws from that day and selected an image I took just moments later to tackle. (Always keep save those raw files!) I not only like this composition better than the older one, but I also feel that I have brought something new out here, rather than simply reprocessing something old.
Thumbs up! Let’s get into another mega post! We’re exploring shots from the first day of the Kentucky Summer horse show, which took place at the Kentucky Horse Park back in the end of July.
Piper Klemm talks to her trainer, Emily Elek.
Then she heads into action in the warm-up ring.
Emily’s son, Will, was also warming up his horse, Papaya. Across these three shots, you can see him working on finding the correct distance to this jump.
Piper seems to always be smiling when she’s on her horse; understandable, really.
Beyond the team which whom I arrived, there were a lot of other folks in the warm-up ring, too.
Sometimes, my camera locks on a rider because they have such an identifiable style. Here’s yet another case of mirrorshades in Kentucky.
We’ll finish off with the serious face of Jimmy Torano.
Decaseconds 