Impromptu Photo Shoot

While Niece #1 has shown in horse shows before, this will be her first year at the Crow Wing County Fair as a 4-Her...she's a Cloverbud and will be riding Will (my mom's bay Arabian gelding).

I was never a Cloverbud (the years before one is old enough to be in 4-H; it's somewhat akin to Cub Scouts) but I remember showing at the county fair with MY pony and the whole experience: decorating the box stall; hanging up my ribbons at the end of the show day; sitting in front of the stall and watching all the people stroll by; talking about my horse and letting everyone pet him...

Her Cloverbud classes will all be "leadline" style – i.e., Mom will have the horse on lead rope and be with her in all her classes – but it's still exciting that this is her first 4-H show. 

She's sharing Will with another 4-Her (a family friend's daughter is riding him in the older classes), and that girl will have her own decorations up on the stall. 

So, I wanted to be sure Niece #1 got the full experience of having a horse at the fair, even if she was sharing him with someone else...I planned to get some pictures of her and "her" horse to hang on the stall door for decorations. But, even though I was up North a couple weekends when Niece #1 was, we never got any pictures taken of the two of them (the horse is boarded at a stable ~30 minutes away). 

Well, that left this weekend – and not very much time. I came up on Sunday afternoon (so I could enter my fair photos), and the show starts this morning. We were all too tired to do pictures on Sunday evening so yesterday morning we headed over to the barn for a quick photo shoot.

The plan was to shoot in the morning, quick edit the good ones, then throw them on a flash drive for Mom to take to Target and get prints that afternoon. 

We didn't get to the barn as early as I'd've liked, so the lighting wasn't great but I did the best I could (and, of course, the cloud cover I'd been banking on went away so we had full sun). Plus, the barn's a tad short on ambience, so we had to walk over to a nearby field...again, you work with what you have :)

All in all, for a quick 30-minute shoot (with a 7-year-old and a horse who wanted nothing more than to bury his head in the grass), I think I got some good ones. 

Mom, like the true trooper she is, took the flash drive into Target and got a bunch of photos, which I then taped to a piece of tag board...pretty simple but at least we got it done! 

Now Niece #1 will have her own stall decorations for her very first 4-H show :) She's not even awake yet but I'm giddy with excitement and can't WAIT to see how she does!

Good luck, kiddo!