Last Polo

     So I just got back from my last Wednesday night polo ever, well at least until I'm back on  breaks next year. Speaking of polo, the national championships for men and women's intercollegiate teams are being held during my April break which is next week. This means that a huge bunch of teams are coming in from around the country, most of them with their strings (usually 2 horses per person, 4 people per team, men's and women's teams) I have no idea how many horses that is but its a lot and we try to fit them all into the barn or trailers in the parking lot. Pretty much the back of the barn is complete chaos. I mean chaos! At any given time there are twenty people back there shouting and trying to get horses ready for the next game, two playing strings (3 horses per playing team so 6 total per chucker), multiple coaches trying to talk strategy before the game and our high school team running around attempting to keep the barn in order. Then in the arena there are 8 horses and people in the ring playing a chucker (7:30 minutes with stoppage for a walk break ie. the horses walk around to cool down and catch their breath and any fouls or injuries) there are four chuckers to a game and if there is a tie the game goes immediately to shootout I believe. As this is happening all of next week I'm hoping to get a lot of pictures, not necessarily of the games them selves but of the chaos in the back. I am gone Monday through Wednesday so I will miss those games but I will get to see the finals and some prelim games.
      Also happening in the near future is the barn I work at getting all of our ponies and horses in for the summer. This is super exciting because it means that I will have many different horses to photograph as well as extended periods of time to take pictures. A lot of my healing series will be done here at Misty.
    I think those are all the updates for now.

The Latest Photos

    So these are a few of my favorite pictures I've taken from the past few weeks. This photo on the left is of Clara and the one on the right is Pico. Pico is such a character, he is so inquisitive, I love it.


These are a couple of people from Wednesday nights. I love the action in this shot.

The one to the above is of Marrissa, she is a grouch so to catch her looking happy is a pretty big feat.

Below is David's horse Desi. She is a gorgeous dapple grey, she is in training to play polo right now.

Mentor Meeting 3/22/11

    So I had a mentor meeting with Mrs G. on Monday and it went very well. We talked a lot about how I am doing well with my project but I am not pushing myself out of my comfort zone. So my mission for this week is to push myself outside of my comfort zone
      She suggested that I do an enrichment program at one of the elementary schools. For those of you who don't know, enrichment is a bunch of programs that are open to elementary kids. People from around the community come for an hour after school to teach classes on a variety of topics. Unfortunately elementary school ends at 2:00 and enrichment starts at 2:05 and goes until 3:05 this is smack dab in the middle of my 7th and 8th period classes and I can't miss those. I am going to think about solutions to this problem because leading an enrichment class for an hour once a week for 8 weeks would definitely put me outside of my comfort zone.
      Another suggestion was going to local coffee shops and asking if I could display some of my work for a while. I mentioned the fact that I was thinking of holding a photo show at my house and Mrs G. was a little hesitant because she really wants me to get out of my comfort zone and therefore my house with people I know might be too comfortable. I totally understand this and I think thats why I was leaning towards holding the show at my house because it would be more comfortable for me.
   Mrs G. also suggested that I interview a local photographer. I talked to Judy but I know her rather well and I am comfortable with her so talking to Judy wouldn't be getting out of my comfort zone. One of the photos I used in one of my earlier was taken by Jenna at Jenna Leigh Teti Photography. Jenna said that I could email her with any questions or to just talk about photography in general. I think that I will take advantage of her offer and see how she got into photography. I am also planning on contacting a friend's mom, who is an equine vet at cornell, and seeing if I could get in to take pictures of a workout on the treadmill or something like that.
    I also need to talk to Judy soon to see if she would be willing to let me print my photos at school using school paper. I would pay for the paper and ink I used. If I can't print at school then I will have to find another place to print.
     I think thats all for now. I will be posting pictures of my long exposure experiment and some nice Wednesday night polo pictures at a later date.

Polo in a Nutshell

This is the Cornell Men's and Women's polo coach. If you haven't played or seen polo yet you should definitely get over to Oxley and watch some because it is amazing. It is so addicting.

This is a Harvard Polo video but it was shot at Cornell during the Nationals of 2009 I believe.

WISE Class 3/14/11

       So yesterday we had WISE class and Mrs. G kinda yelled at us for being behind in our projects. She said that as we were supposed to be doing at least 3 post minimum per week we should be pretty close to 14 entries if not more. I am feeling semi ok about this. I do have more than 14 entries but not a ton more, just a few. So another goal of this week is to blog more, even if its not a long entry. One of my classmates asked what the minimum length for an entry was and Mrs. G said as much as you would write in one sitting. Now I find this a problem for me because I tend to write a little bit then come back to it and add more thoughts that I have come up with. I think I will stick with the longer entries for now but not be worried about posting shorter entries if that is all I can think of at the moment.
    I will be posting a video of my polo coach speaking about polo (duh) later in the week as well as a progress report on how I am meeting my goals.
    As this is all I can think of at the moment I am ending my post here. Hmm maybe I do like this shorter posts thing.

Progress!!

     So I have been very productive this week :D.  I went over to a friend's barn on Thursday and took pictures of her jumping and doing some flat work. Thank you sooo much Nicole!!!!!! I absolutely love some of the pictures I got and have already started to edit some of them. Polo co-ed regionals are also on this weekend so I have been at the barn taking tons of pictures, I hope they turn out well! Congrats to Cedar Valley for winning regionals! Good luck at nationals!


Here are some of my favorite pictures from break. I have a total of 44 photos that I like a lot so far. I haven't looked at the ones from today yet. These are the ones that will definitely be going into my portfolio.

  














The picture above is probably my favorite picture I have taken to date. I love the contrast and the movement in this picture.
     I like the picture on the left as well because the sense of movement is there as well as the action of polo.

This was taken at a friend's barn. She was jumping in a lesson and invited me to come up an photograph it. I like the different angle this was taken at.








This is Blondie. She was recently bought and is just starting to get the hang of jumping. She has the cutest little face that is so expressive. She definitely jumps her heart out.

This is Chris, he plays on the open Cornell Interscholastic team. I like this one because it shows how open the arena is and it shows a good bump.

I really like this picture because it shows all three pairs coming at the camera. This is exactly what I love about polo.

I just love this shot because I think it really shows how flexible and agile polo horses are. I also think that there is a certain grace about polo ponies that really comes through in this photo.











I love the bunching of muscle on this horse. I think it shows the strength of horses really well.










So, there it is. I will have more to put up soon. Please leave comments on your opinions.

Time to get Inspired!!

       So this past weekend was crazy for me. I had hockey all weekend in Massena and we ended up winning the State Championship  :D for the first time since 2003. Please forgive me for not updating the status of my project sooner.
      So this week I plan to finish reading A Dummy's Guide to the Nikon D3100 I have read through the sections I have thought would be most useful to me but I haven't read through the entire thing yet. I am also hoping to play around with the settings on my camera so that by the polo games on either Friday or Saturday I am able to take shots that I am happy with and that would be useful to me in my project.

  

    One of my Community Contacts,  JC lent me her copy of Spirit Horses by Tony Stromberg. Spirit Horses is a collection of photographs taken and edited by Stromberg. Many of these shots are in sepia tones or black and white JC had said, when I interviewed her that she preferred horse pictures in either black and white or sepia and I have to agree. There is something about the sepia and black and white tones that brings out the majestic qualities in a horse. I am planning on getting this book eventually because I think that it would be an inspiration. Here is one of the pictures from his book.

Thank you to Jenna at Jenna Leigh Teti Photography

    My WISE teacher Mrs. G. had mentioned that people in previous years had started doing questions of the week and suggested that I do a photo of the week. So every week I will choose a different photo that inspires me while working on my project. Hopefully once I start shooting I will do a follow up post that has a that I took that was inspired by my photo of the week. We'll see how well that works out. I decided on this one for my first week. I absolutely love that this shot shows the game of polo as it truly is: an intense sport that can be dangerous but more often than not is fun and exhilarating. I like that this shot is a stop action shot, meaning that there is little or no blur to the picture. It really captures the motion of the horses and the intensity of the game.

And so the Day has Arrived

      The day that I will be exited from WISE class is almost here!!! I 'm soo excited to start working on my project. Congrats to J and E for being the first to exit. I can't explain how excited I am for this. It seems like all we did was talk about the second semester when we would be doing our projects but now the second semester is actually here :O and we're actually starting our projects. Its rather daunting but also exciting.
       So luckily the college team worked Saturday's polo game so I was free to take pictures. I'm happy with some and very unhappy with others but over all it was a good time to get the feel of how fast my shutter really needs to be and what my aperture should be. I got some good shots but I don't think I'll be using them for my portfolio.
        One problem I'm having is that the lenses my dad and I have are not fast enough to capture polo using the lighting in the arena. Which means that either I need to buy a faster lens or open my aperture as big as it can be. But opening up my aperture is going to make less and less of the picture be in focus so I think I am going to need a faster lens. However a faster lens means money. We'll see how that works out.
         In the mean time I'm going to put up some of the pictures I did in my photography and advanced photography courses last year.

This is quote and photo really sum up my thoughts on a girl's relationship with her horse.

This is my friend A and her horse Rosco.

I took this right at dinner time. A was going down aisle and Trudy, who is in the foreground, was whinnying like it was her last supper.

Once again this is Rosco. I think this one speaks for itself.

My Two Week Plan

So I have to come up with this plan for what I am hoping to accomplish in the next two weeks. I set the expectaion that I would figure out the outline for my projects by the end of February so I need to start figuring out each of my pieces and start planning specifically when I need to have pictures shot by. I am going to publish a portfolio as one of my pieces, another one is going to be a collage of pictures of horse parts and I am going to mesh them into one photo of a horse. So I might have the legs of a dressage horse under the body of a polo pony, with the head of a jumper and so on. I think this is the piece I am most excited for. As of right now I am also planning to create a PowerPoint or a slideshow, which would show the progression of chaos between dressage, show jumping and indoor polo.
By the end of these two weeks I hope I have extensively planned out my collage of horses and have started shooting for it. I am going to a polo game tonight so hopefully *Crossing My Fingers* I won't have to work during the games and I can take pictures instead. I will be using my Nikon D3100, this will be my first time using the camera for polo so it will be interesting to see how it goes. If you haven't been to a polo game I suggest you go immediately! It is soo much fun.
TTYL