Billie.

"She comes down from Yellow Mountain
On a dark, flat land she rides
On a pony she named Wildfire
With a whirlwind by her side
On a cold Nebraska night."

My appreciation for horses is not extreme. In fact, I would say the further I am away from them the better. That is until recently when I was fortunate to go and photograph a horse named, "Bille."

A friend of ours is an avid horse lover. She not only loves horses but owns two of them. She rides, jumps, and has an incredible connection that can only be understood when you see her with her horses---if you knew all of the details, and commitment that went into owning a horse, you would know if you don't love them, you are wasting your time and a lot of money.

On New Year's Day, I went to the barn where Billie and Pharaoh (her other horse) live. It's not luxurious or warm enough for humans---so probably the best way to explain it would be, it's a "hotel for horses." All in all there are probably 40 to 50 horses at the barn; when I went there and looked around I thought, "Boy these are really small stalls." I was then told, "these are actually pretty spacious." Seeing this convinced me not to come back as a horse after I go to that big camera store in the sky---I would be really disappointed with the living quarters and I can't imagine eating hay.

When I got to the barn I knew it was going to be a good day to photograph; I had a good lens, my trusty Nikon was back from the fix-it shop and I was ready to capture something I had never photographed before---horses. As the light came through the slats in the barn, I realized the lighting was actually not as good as I had hoped and it would likely make for less than excitable photos. 

Of course I challenged myself to get something that was not going to be easy to capture; I wanted to get the "whiskers" of the horse with the sun's backlight coming through. The hardest part? Getting the horses to stay still when my camera was not really in the mood to focus. I did get some photos---and you will see them in future "Snap.Shots."--- but for this day, I wanted something truly special. 

I gave myself an hour to shoot; of course, in looking at the photos I had taken after 60 minutes, I knew that an hour was not going to be long enough. All of the photos just left me saying, "Not that one, and nope this one is blurry, or that's not going to do it." I had 2 shooting  options while I was there; I could photograph in the barn or in the area where equestrian  jumping was happening. There was only one problem with the equestrian jumping---the height of the rails were not like I had envisioned, they were about six inches off the ground. More than enough for me of course---I would never get on a horse again---but the shot was just not there. (That would happen the next week ironically.)

Knowing I had gone to sleep at 2:30AM the night before, I really wanted something for my efforts. So I went back into the barn, ventured to Billie's stall,  just looked at him and vice versa. I think he felt my desperation and just said in horse speak, "Okay, I am going to give you 30 seconds, make this work."

The photo above was one of the last I took that day; Billie is looking at me, and he let me into his world for just a brief moment. What I didn't know was that this was going to be the last photo I would ever take of him. Billie died a week later. I look back at this photo and think--- perhaps he wanted to make sure his good side would end up on a wall and perhaps he wanted me to be the photographer.

Thanks for stopping by.