Bruce and Angel, a local team roper (heeler) and his lovely strawberry roan mare. They were demonstrating how they look coming out of the box. I got so many good shots that I had to just stop looking at the 400+ pics I took, choose one and pp it. Hi-ho Angel, awayy!
pp: curves, contrast, saturation, warming filter, crop, resize, usm 1x, save for web
Post-challenge: Thanks everyone for overall great comments!
Just a quick addition...some expressed concern about the expression in Angel's eye, seeing it as fearful.
Hell no! Here, Angel - a very valuable roping horse, and she wouldn't bne if she weren't worth it - is as pumped as can possibly be, that's why her forefeet are off the ground. She knows her job, and she knows it starts once the lariat is opened up into a loop.
Bruce, her owner, treated Angel with nothing but love and respect. I could (and in fact am) easily fill up a CD with pix showing this as he tacked her up, booted her in front, warmed her up, got her to do as I asked, then got off, hand-walked her, untacked her, hand-walked her some more and hosed her down. That horse is in excellent condition and clearly adores Bruce and her job.
Please keep in mind too that we humans are predators, as are wolves, cougars etc. We have binocular vision, eyes located in the front of our skull. Horses and many other prey animals have their eyes set on the SIDES of their heads to enable them to see basically 340%.
So that dramatic eye is not only taking note of the loop, she is also likely looking for a calf to chase!
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Nice work! This shows how those horses are willing to work - even if it's just a modeling job ;-) My horse was never happy turned out; he loved his job also. I also like the calm demeanor of the cowboy.
I'm glad this scored well for you, Susan! Even more glad your subject liked the shots, too. And thank you VERY much for your detailed description and explanation! Educational as well as a nice tribute for this challenge.
Came back to see what was used for the noise reduction (get lucky once in awhile and people put processing steps in their comments, like you've done), but I'm not seeing mention of any noise reduction applied at all. ???
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