The Slower Road

With three sessions each day, I’m starting in the morning, continuing until late afternoon, and not finishing until rather late … taking photos, coming back to the office between sessions to download, sort, edit, and post photos, and then going back to the show. I have to admit that I’m running a bit behind by now. This afternoon’s session finished a little while ago, and I’ve just finished downloading those photos. But now we’re going to glance back at yesterday evening’s session. And then I’m going to start sorting and editing this morning’s photos! Oh, and folks on the CAA’s Facebook page are clamoring for more and more photos, so I’m trying to post a few there as well … but not the same ones that I post here, if I can help it.

Without a doubt, the visual highlights of Friday evening’s session were the elegant “Park evening” turnouts, the single horse turnout class, and not one but two Coaching classes: turnout and timed obstacles.

If you’ve seen some of my other photos of driving events and competitions here on the blog (CAA Conferences, world driving championships, the 2010 World Equestrian Games, etc.), you may have noticed that I like the subjects of my photos to be crisp and clear and nicely in focus. Our pleasure-driving show this weekend is in the Kentucky Horse Park’s indoor arena. The air-conditioning is saving all of us from melting or fainting away in this weekend’s extreme heat, which is wonderful. But the available light in the indoor arena makes taking photos a bit of, um, a challenge.

When I first tried photographing carriage driving in the indoor arena last year, I was rather disappointed with the out-of-focus results. But for this once-a-year event, I’ve decided to look at the glass as half full, and I choose to see the good ones (rest assured, I’m deleting the bad ones) as “artistic.” And I’ve actually come to enjoy the sense of movement in some of these, with their blurry moving parts and that one important or interesting bit in focus.

Here are some of my favorites from yesterday evening, in the order that I took them:

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Misdee Wrigley Miller in the Park Division: Evening Turnout class

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Tom Burgess in the Park Division: Evening Turnout class

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Although you can’t see her, Karen Waldron is driving this pair of Friesians

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Michelle Werry and her lovely Hackneys won the Park Division: Evening Turnout class

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Tom Burgess again

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… and Michelle again, with her blue ribbon

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Sterling Graburn and Ulano won the Single Horse Turnout class

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the Werrys’ gorgeous Hackneys again, this time with Glenn A. Werry, Jr., driving them to a Park Drag; they won the HorseShow.com Coaching Division: Turnout class

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Misdee Wrigley Miller driving her Park Drag in the turnout class

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another view of the Werrys’ coach

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Gerben Steenbeek’s Park Drag in the line-up for the turnout class …

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… and a close-up of the spread laid out on the coach’s tailgate

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Misdee Wrigley Miller did a masterful job of driving the cones course to win the HorseShow.com Coaching Division: Timed Obstacles class

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I’m interrupting our nineteenth-century visit with James Flint so that you can enjoy this year’s CAA Carriage Festival, which got underway this morning. We’ll get back to Mr. Flint’s letters next week!

Yesterday, I went over to the arena and the stables to get some photos of people arriving, moving in, setting up, and getting ready for the weekend.

I found trade fair vendors setting up shop on the arena’s mezzanine, ponies being unloaded from trailers and moved into their stalls, a horse getting a bath, a beautiful carriage being cleaned, several carriages (most of them under wraps) waiting in the aisleways, and a pair of horses coming back from a drive. Oh, and I met a sweet dog named Britt. (I mean, really, what’s a horse show without dogs?)

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