{"id":23704,"date":"2014-05-06T05:24:29","date_gmt":"2014-05-06T11:24:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=23704"},"modified":"2014-05-06T07:15:33","modified_gmt":"2014-05-06T13:15:33","slug":"fighting-wild-horses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2014\/05\/06\/fighting-wild-horses\/","title":{"rendered":"Fighting Wild Horses"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday we had an incredible morning with a herd of wild horses in the west\u00a0desert of Utah.\u00a0 It was a learning experience for me on many levels.\u00a0 It was so very interesting to watch the behaviors and interactions between the horses, especially this time of year when so much is going on but since this was my first experience photographing them I made many mistakes with lighting, timing,\u00a0camera settings\u00a0and even choice of camera gear – mistakes I hope not to repeat in the future.<\/p>\n

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\"wild<\/p>\n

This was the herd on the desert floor as we approached.\u00a0 I was slightly surprised that there was so many of them (there are others that you can’t see here).<\/p>\n

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\"wild<\/p>\n

As the horses grazed a few groups of them would move off in different directions.\u00a0 Later in the morning this band was returning to a cement water tank, presumable placed there\u00a0by the BLM for their use.\u00a0 Much of the time everything seemed relatively peaceful on the surface but that was really an illusion – there was lots of simmering tension, especially between the stallions.\u00a0 Fights broke out regularly but unpredictably – at least it was mostly unpredictable for me because of my lack of skill at reading their behaviors.<\/p>\n

The prevailing mood would seem calm for a while and then in an instant…<\/p>\n

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\"wild<\/p>\n

all hell would break out.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0image and the following two are sequential shots in a burst.\u00a0 The horses are side lit and the water tank isn’t pretty but I thought the action was pretty dramatic.<\/p>\n

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\"wild<\/p>\n

Notice how calm the other horses are amid all the excitement.\u00a0 These fights break out so regularly that\u00a0noncombatants usually seem to take them in stride.<\/p>\n

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\"wild<\/a><\/p>\n

Though it’s difficult to make out, the horse on the left seems to be reacting to being bitten on its upper chest.\u00a0 After this shot was taken the fight was over almost\u00a0as quickly as it began.<\/p>\n

I’ll be posting more images of these\u00a0wild horses over the next few weeks.\u00a0 Many, many thanks to our new friend Wade Haskell for introducing us to the herd.\u00a0 Wade is my kind of guy on many levels, not the least of which is the tremendous respect he has for these horses that he loves so dearly.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

PS – sorry for the silly typo that went out with the subscription email to this post.\u00a0 Yes, I do know the difference between desert and dessert…<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday we had an incredible morning with a herd of wild horses in the west desert of Utah.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,2002],"tags":[140,311,533,2003],"class_list":["post-23704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-wild-horses","tag-fighting","tag-utah-2","tag-west-desert","tag-wild-horses-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/wild-horse-1393-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-6ak","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}