Although the weather was great, sunny and breezy all day long, it was not ideal for photography. At each jump in order to get really good images you had to determine if there was an angle you could shoot at that would put the sun behind you. Otherwise the shady side of the horse was pretty dark. After starting at the main water jumps, I worked my way completely around the course taking some photos at each jump if I could find a good angle.

I would say hello to other photographers, both amateur and professional. I might mention the Equine Photographer’s Network or just ask them how things were going. I handed out my card and asked them to email me and I would send them a link when they said they wanted to know more about EPnet. Some already knew about EPnet, but the ones that did not were interested in knowing more. We’ll see if they were interested enough to email me for the link. Mary Ann Allen is an EPnet member from Indiana who I met while seeking some shade. She was seeking the shade to do some chimping and we had a chance to chat there in the shade during the lunch break before moving on.

It was evident that some jumps were modified to prevent problems with the jumps (the major wreck last year lead to special meetings about the safety in the sport). There were several falls, but it seemed to me that in every case the horse and rider were okay.  There was one incident when a horse had jumped jump 10, and something went wrong. My understanding was that he landed okay, but staggered a bit and collapsed and died, but really I only spoke briefly to another photographer about it. Go to the news blogs and the official site have the details written up by now.  Click here for the news of Kingpin’s death.

Here are some photos from the event. At the bottom is a link to my gallery of images from the event.

Above: This was the main water jumps about halfway through the course. There were huge crowds here throughout the day and it was difficult to find good angles. At one point I thought I had a good place. There were some people sitting in lawn chairs right at the rope, but then as soon as a horse arrived, they stood up completely obstructing my view. 

Below: Throughout the course you could stand very close to the corridor and the jumps which were marked off for spectators with white rope. There were crossing guards to make sure people could get from one side to the other without disrupting the competitors. But, as you can see here there were many places where you could shoot unobstructed as these horses FLEW by at full gallops with dirt flying.

Above: Rider negotiates the “sunken road” series of jumps which included a jump prior to going down into the sunken road (a good 5 feet down into the ground), then popping up and out after one stride within the sunken road and negotiating another jump immediately upon coming up out onto the ground.

Above: This is jump 10 where Kingpin collapsed. This is another rider later in the day. It is placed fairly early in the course as there were 29 or 30 jumps total.

Below: Also among my favorite subjects, people enjoying those they love. I also took a couple of puppy photos, and interesting white German Shepherd, and a group of three ladies that wanted their photos taken. I gave to each (except this photo) my business card so that they could come to my site and look at the resulting images. Who knows if they will or not.

For more pictures from the Rolex Kentucky 3 Day event click on this line.