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> I know that there are a few of you that ride with your camera and 
> take the most wonderful pictures.  I was wondering what type of 
> camera you use and do you stop to take the picture or do you take 
> them "on the fly"?

I'll have to look at my camera to see what model of Olympus it 
is.  It is a 7.1 megapixel camera with zoom.  I got it from 
costco.com (don't think they carried it in the store tho)  I always 
try to choose cameras that can be operated with one hand.  That way I 
can keep the other hand on the reins.  You really do need a horse 
that will stop and stand still.  The newer digital cameras all seem 
to have a big of a delay, so your horse needs to be able to stand 
still for that period of time, it can be tricky getting the timing 
just right.  I think it's good training for any horse, to learn to 
stop and stand anywhere you want, in any situation.  It can take 
awhile.  I have enough blurry ear-cam shots to prove that ;)

My camera has a rechargeable battery, luckily the same kind as my 
previous Olympus had (the same model that Jackie Floyd uses), and 
also uses the same xd memory card.  I like to have an extra battery 
and memory card so that you can switch them out if you need to.  I 
really need to buy a 1 gig card rather than the 512 or whatever I 
have now, as I can fill that up fast taking those large photos, as 
well as video that it does.

As far as how to take the photos -- main thing is to stop the 
horse.  I usually am quick on the draw - whipping the camera out with 
one hand and pulling the horse to a stop with the other, and/or 
turning the horse around so that I can take photos of riders that are 
behind me (yes really, sometimes there are riders behind 
me!  lol)  Then as soon as the button clicks, I push the button that 
closes the lense back up and stick the camera back into my pouch.  I 
made a little polarfleece pouch for it, used a piece of wire from a 
coathanger and shaped the opening of the pouch with that, so that it 
stays open and I can get the camera in and out with one hand.

If I see something that I think I will really like, I try to get two 
or three shots, sometimes moving only a couple of feet or so.  You 
just never know how the lighting will work, or not --  I am always 
experimenting and taking photos in all types of lights and directions 
because sometimes the ones that you don't think will turn out are 
often the best ones.  Besides, it's easy to delete them if they don't.

Here are where some of my photos 
are:  http://sunriseranchrides.com/  http://xprides.com/photos.html 
including a few videos.  I'm still figuring out the best way to do 
that.  I think to do video it's probably better to be off the horse, 
or else it looks like the Blair Witch Project.  You can see in some 
of the Bryce video I took how close I was to the edge of a cliff, and 
once I nearly got knocked off of the horse by a branch, so it's 
probably not really safe to be video'ing from horseback on certain trails. :P

Here is an example of the zoom.  This is a photo of Charlie Robinson 
on the Blue Fly Trail at 
Bryce.  regular: 
http://www.xprides.com/Bryce_2005/pages/P1010113.html  and zoomed 
in:   http://www.xprides.com/Bryce_2005/pages/P1010112.html

Once you take the photos, it really helps to have photo editing 
software that will batch resize the photos.  If you want to put them 
onto the web you really need to reduce them in size or they will take 
too long to load.  I've been using Photo Elf, and it's great, easy to 
use and fast.

Hope that helps!

Karen





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