It’s hot outside!! Oh, how I love those words. What do you get when you have temperatures in the upper 80’s and 90’s and add high humidity? Heat indexes near and over 100 degrees and lots of people saying “It’s hot outside”. While most people hate those words, I consider them music to my ears. If you haven’t figured it out yet I love warmth. A warm, or in this case hot, Chuck is a Happy Chuck. The temperatures lured me outside in a hurry, and I had fun.

What did I do?

Well, since it’s hot outside, I went hiking one weekend at Devil’s Lake State Park. Although I took my camera, I didn’t get any decent photos. It was a fun day, though and it was definitely hot.

I also spent July 4th at Old World Wisconsin and got a few pics of some flowers and the drying barn.

But, the best part was going to my first dressage horse event.

Dressage

Dressage is a sport that involves riding and training a horse in a manner that develops obedience, flexibility, and balance. It’s definitely art in motion. I think it is pretty impressive. I attended the Summer Horse Trials at Silverwood Farm in near Camp Lake, WI. A friend invited me to take photos of his daughter, who was competing with her horse. This was a great day and it was hot outside.

Timing and control is everything for the riders. The same is true for the photographers trying to capture the moments. You can’t just put your camera on servo mode and shoot like a machine gun, hoping to capture the correct moment. My camera was set to single shot, with the aperture almost fully open and a shutter speed of 1/500 of a second.

I spent a while watching how the horses moved and tried to figure out some kind of timing. Even before going, I did 7-8 hours of research to figure out the correct horse positions, terminology, horse movements and tips from the pros. I ended up taking around 1500 photos, of which, I kept maybe 50.

On the drive home it started to rain and the temperature dropped significantly. I got sunburned, but it was worth it and I can’t wait to go again. My friend’s daughter was impressive, did very well and maybe I will post some of her and Chibbi (her horse), but she gets to see them first.

New photos have been added to the Animals, Trees, Various and OWW Buildings galleries. As always enjoy.

Chuck