Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Horse Show at My House!

     Breyer posted that the Breyerfest show this year will be a virtual show.  Since I had already decided through a bit of peer-pressure, that I would buy a Breyerfest ticket for the first time ever, it was not too much of a leap for me to enter the performance show. I do love performance showing after all. I have also not done any showing since last fall. I read the packet for the virtual show and while the tips for taking photos are definitely geared more towards halter, I had enough to go on to start thinking about how, and where to do my virtual show entry pics. 
     First, I needed to check the lighting. This clearly shows that my backdrop is a bit too see-through and the light from the window behind the photo tent is distracting. It also shows that my white backdrop needs ironing. 
     Even though it is not a photo show, so the backdrop really doesn't count, it looked sloppy and lazy to me. So I ironed it. I really hate ironing. But I would hate for my photos to be counted down for looking sloppy. Even if the backdrop shouldn't matter in the least. 

     I ironed, I put the white photo drop over the regular photo drop to block out the light and was (almost) realy to go! Getting to this point took quite a bit of work. And I still had a lot of work ahead of me. 
     I pulled out all the tack and props, tried not to put them in the way of everyone and everything, and I got to playing with my horses. I missed this. 
      I missed the fun setups, and the sometimes insane amount of extra detail. 
     I realized after just a few photos that the sunlight, which was perfect for my lighting needs for my sample photos, was now not cutting it. So I grabbed a couple of my studio lights and put them up. That helped quite a bit. 
     I have show stuff in all sorts of places around my house. Some is on shelves, some is stored in the back of my car, and several things are in the closet in the living room, in different levels of the stacks of totes. I tried to do my photos so I could unpack the closet, get the stuff I needed from the totes and start slowly putting everything away. It mostly worked. It was still a long day of horse showing and I woke up the next day feeling like I had been at a live show. 
     So what are some challenges to trying to get performance photos at my house? I don't have a great place to set things up. It has been winter-cold outside and super windy, or raining, so that isn't an option. We also have very limited space inside the house. So to be out of everyone's way I set up my performance photos in my room. And I have very limited space in there as well so this is all set up on my bed, lol! I set up the photo tent and put a big piece of some large square flat material (can't remember what it is) and put my footing on that. It worked surprisingly well. 
     I won't share any of my actual photos, but after Breyerfest I might. The virtual format is causing me to do things I normally don't do. I have never bought a ticket to Breyerfest, but this year I bought a 3-day ticket and then I bought a 4 pack of single day tickets. I am not an OF collector, what is going on with me? I also entered the performance show and I am thinking about doing the virtual 5K. Special Olympics is doing a virtual summer games and the competition date is July 12th, same as the 5K day. So since Travis said he wants to compete I am leaning more towards doing the 5K. We can train together and we can have a big fitness day on July 12th. It's definitely worth considering. 

2 comments:

  1. If you fold your backdrop cloth differently every time, you won't have fold lines.

    I love the idea of holding a photo session on one's bed. At least you don't have a broken leg. :)

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  2. Folding it differently every time works great, if you use your backdrops more often. I think the last time I pulled them all out was at least a year ago.

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