Niagara Region Horses
I’ve lived in a number of different parts of Canada and the USA. Different areas claim they are ‘horse country’. I’ve come to believe I’m not the only person in the world that is in love with these beautiful animals.
I was in Oregon for a while but wasn’t doing much horse photography back then. Kinda wish I had been; it’s great horse country there. The eastern part of the state is high desert and lots of big ranches with lots of horses. Cowboy country.
Later I lived in Alberta for a number of years. One of my favourite places. Southern Alberta is more cowboy than Texas. (More Texas than Texas!) One of the first times I was photographing a local rodeo a little north of Calgary, the next rider was announced as the top calf roping student in his High School. They would teach these skills in the rural high schools!!
If anyone is worried, they would all lose points if they did anything that would harm the animals. These cowboys and cowgirls were quite kind and humane to the animals. They like the animals.
Here in the Niagara region of Ontario there are horses all over.
We were picking up some honey yesterday from a local guy and decided to wander some backroads on the way home. My wife said ‘let’s go here’. It looked like a dead end but ‘what the heck’!
Got a couple of hundred metres and there was a barn, a bunch of paddocks with eight or nine horses and a donkey. I knocked to ask but no one home. So I took these shots from the road. I got the contact info from their sign and sent them a couple of the photos. I’ve now been welcomed back anytime to take more.
I’ll wait till it’s a bit drier - less mud on the horses. They like rolling around in it too much.
Lots of ‘horse’ photos here on my website. One of my favourites photo outings was in Southern Alberta, a branding. I did a write up of the day here and a bunch of photos: https://photo-photo.com/event-photos/branding/
And as for the ‘painterly’ photo, you can look at my last few blog posts and see more of this and why.
Enjoy!