Riva in Blizzard

Riva in Blizzard

I have a new rule: If it is winter and it is snowing hard with strong winds and it is cold I will not answer the phone. Curious rule, huh?

Why? Because when I do I know that it is my friend Lisa Cueman on the line and she wants to play. No, not checkers, she wants to play outside in the snow and wind and cold photographing horses. What? You expect me to say no?

Lisa is a wonderful fine art photographer. She used to be one of my students until she realized that if she did everything opposite of what I said it would lead her to fame and fortune. Now she has several big city galleries showing her work and she is working on several one-person shows. She also realized that when it comes to horse photography I am far more useful wrangling than giving photography advice. When I see her finished prints I realize the same thing- get out of her way and deal with the horses.

So there I was this afternoon in the middle of a heavy snow storm running the fence line with a bucket of horse treats trying to get the horses away from Lisa so she could get pictures of them running back to her. We did this for two hours! I snuck a few shots in here and there just to have proof I was out there is such conditions. I used my 28-300mm with a lens hood and hand held pretty much wide open at ISO 800 to get adequate shutter speed. My shots are nice. The images I saw on the back of Lisa’s camera are really nice and several are spectacular. Go to her website- http://www.lisacuemanphotography.com – and see some of her winter horse images under her equine photography/black and white II tab. The gray horse with the black mane is Riva, the white horse with the very long mane is Haley. The fuzzy figure in the background that has been cleverly excised is yours truly running the fence line. Enjoy, but don’t call me unless it is sunny out.