Snow day pictures in Dayton, Ohio: horses, snow and people, how fun!

My wife, Patty is a teacher at Miamisburg city schools. There is nothing more fun than a snow day and today would certainly have been one, except for the fact that they already had the day off for presidents day.

Riding horses in snow is great fun and with the snow coming down throughout the day Patty could not wait for the snow to stop to get out and ride. Patty does endurance rides and competitive trail rides in the summer and this was a great opportunity to exercise her horses. The snow was so deep that it was like riding through deep sand. However before she could ride, she thought it was wise to lunge the horses. They were very excited about all the snow coming down as you will see in the pictures.

As you can see the snow was quite deep. The next image shows Merlot putting his nose down in the snow as he continued around Patty.

Patty laughs as Merlot’s nose is covered with snow.

Below is Cocoa being lunged before his ride. I was too exhausted from clearing the snow from the driveway to trudge out to the pasture to take pictures of them riding, plus the snow was coming down so hard that my camera would have been soaked in no time. Now it is official. Another SNOW DAY with school canceled for tomorrow. More fun in the snow, more riding horses in the snow, how fun is that? Our neighbor was nice enough to run his tractor mounted snow blower up our drive earlier, but I was the one who had to dig a path to where we dump our manure so that the horses could have nice fresh new bedding after their ride in the deep snow of the 2010 winter here in Dayton, Ohio. The snow has not quit and it is now dark.

Cocoa is such a good boy. He gets a pat on the head before headed out for a ride with Patty.

With all the snow, now our third major snow fall in the last couple of weeks, I’ve listed several posts about taking better pictures in snow. You can find them linked to my home page on this web site: http://www.photosbypdemott.com This post will appear on my notes page on my facebook personal page. It will also appear on my wall on my photography business fan page on facebook and it will be tweeted on my twitter account. Please feel free to follow me in any of these locations.

A telephoto zoom and kids / I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE natural smiles.

I have to say that I have always liked taking pictures of people with a telephoto lens. It is particularly great for taking pictures of kids with completely natural expressions. In this particular portrait I was at a competitive trail ride near Dayton during the vet check portion of the ride. This young rider is the son of Shannon Loomis. All her children are quite cute and this young man was waiting his turn to show his horse to the vet at the finish of the ride. Natural smile come so easily to young children when they are unaware of the camera.

When I do a kids portrait session there is nothing that can frustrate me more than a parent telling their child to smile. Sometimes this results in a completely unnatural pasted on smile that is unappealing. It is not the smile that comes from delight or finding something funny. It ends up being a false representation of the person. There are two things that can help with this. First it is important to instruct the parents that they may not instruct there children during the session. No instructions like, “Not that smile…you know the smile we want.” There is nothing that will cause a child not to relax more than a parent making them feel selfconscious about how they look or what they are doing.

And second I have had good success doing a “candid” session where the parent and the child play together and I tell the parent to just pretend they are alone and to just forget about me. With the telephoto lens I can walk about looking for those natural moments without being right there close to the action. I can be 15 to 20 feet away like I was with this portrait. As I have posted before (this blog appears on my website and on my facebook accounts) sometimes my best images of children occur in the first few moments or the very last moments of a session either before the children figure out that I am photographing or after we announce that we are all finished. Of course all these things depend on the age of the child.

Here is the young boy I mentioned in the paragraphs above – just too cute. One thing that you will notice is that in all competitive trail rides and endurance rides junior riders are required to wear protective riding helmets. In addition Shannon has protective riding vests on each of her children when they participate in these events together.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Natural smiles.

This portrait was taken from 20 feet away using a 70-200 mm telephoto zoom lens using available light.