You see, we had a broken water pump. That means you either secure a camping spot with hook-ups or you might as well go tent camping. It's fairly rainy around here lately so the latter was not a solid option. And then we lost (as in disintegrated) a trailer tire on the way down from Jackson, Wyoming. The result is that we needed to camp near mail service, cell service, and a tire store (bonus: take-out pizza) for a few days longer than originally planned. While waiting for that new rim and tire to be delivered, we drove up to the Sand Wash Basin to see if we could find any of the 400 or so wild mustangs.
We did not find very many. I had envisioned herds of a few dozen, hooves pounding, manes flying, dust swirling and myself channeling Ansel Adams while shooting at the spectacle from the roof of the truck. Instead, we saw just seven total, but don't read that as disappointment. These horses are used to humans so they will let you get within about fifty yards, which is almost the perfect shooting distance with my long lens (much closer and you get stellar images of horse nostrils). Anyway, I stink at fast action photography so if we had seen the galloping herd you would be marveling at a collection of images wherein each individual dust speck and possibly a couple of ears were in tack sharp focus while the horses were a lovely romantic blur.
I don't usually do much editing on my photos because I would rather you see what God created than all of my digital "fingerprints," but today I had a little creative fun with some of the mustang shots. Others I left natural. Enjoy!
-Jenni
P.S. In case you missed it, we are having a photo caption contest on our previous post on the National Museum of Wildlife Art. Check it out and enter -- contest closes on Tuesday, Sept. 17.