Shooting Horses

One of the Belgians, warming up

I hope you had a lovely weekend and had a little less snow, ice, and bitter cold than we did here in Middle Earth. It is supposed to warm up into the mid-teens this week - time to dig out the shorts and tee shirts!

These monsters don’t look very agile - until they do!

I spent a wonderful Saturday in Rantool, Illinois, a little town a few hour to our south, photographing a horse auction. I don’t know how I could have been alive these 45 years without knowing  that we shared the planet with a species of horse that is only slightly smaller than a brontosaurus.

Spectacular animals

They are known as Belgian horses, even though none of the ones I met spoke a word of French. But they are quite enormous - I estimated them to be roughly 30 feet tall, but I am not good at such estimates. They were quite majestic and very beautiful when standing still. When they start to walk they look a little more like a World War I tank of some kind, and make abut as much noise. The noise comes from their metal feet, which they do not seem particularly happy about. They are about as graceful when walking on concrete as a fork lift falling down an elevator shaft, but when they were moved onto the soft earth and began to trot, they appeared to float effortlessly, in defiance of gravity, around the vast indoor oval.

The farmers who were buying and selling these magnificent animals were Amish, and a hardier group of individuals than any I have previously encountered. They appeared to be immune to the bone chilling temperature and were far more warm and welcoming than the vast barn-like building in which the auction was held. The Amish, I have been informed, are not big fans of the electron, which would have been a deal breaker for me, in the unlikely event they had invited me to join their merry band. Making up for their lack of interest in technology, these happy men and women seemed to love hard work. The young men tending to the horses never paused in their laboring, and as you will see from any of these images, the result of their effort was an arena packed to the rafters with equine excellence.

And what does any of this have to do with the activities scheduled for this week, you may ask? Nothing at all really, but I wanted you to know why there were several photographs of horses scattered throughout a blog post on a macro photography website. And now you know!

Hats off to these hardworking cowboys

We kick off this week with something unusual. On Tuesday’s Macro Talk I am going to address a seldom discussed subject that I think may be useful to the newer members of the audience.

It is titled “Timing” (and can be found here - https://youtube.com/live/xqK_QXs-Bzs?feature=share) but it is probably not what you are thinking. I will attempt to answer questions like, when “should I buy a focus rail?”, “When do I go from extension tubes to a microscope objective?”, “How will I know that it is time I thought about getting a lesson or two?”, and so on. I will talk about most of the big decisions we make during our macro experience and give you my thoughts on when the time is right to take the plunge. It should be fun as this is something I have been meaning to talk about for some time.

So graceful!

On Thursday, at 2PM, we have another MacroTalkToo coming up and I plan to use this time to get caught up on the backlog of questions that have been accumulating in my various messaging apps.

There will be plenty of time to any questions from the audience, but I think we can cover a lot of interesting material in one hour. Please plan on joining us this Thursday - the link is here - https://youtube.com/live/xS5l0SKMQrY?feature=share

Saturday is another Pzoom - a two-hour face to face conversation with my Patreon supporters. I do this every other Saturday and they are usually a lot of fun.

A great opportunity to  ask questions, show off cool pictures or new gear, and get to know one another. I love these Pzoom meetings and I always get something out of the gatherings. The invite is over on the Patreon page - https://www.patreon.com/allanwallsphotography.

Immediately following the Pzoom meeting is Tangent - a 3D modeling and printing discussion forum that is led by Larry Strunk and that is open to anyone who would like to attend.

It also is a lot of fun and a great way to spend a snowy Saturday afternoon. Here is the invitation - I hope you will come by and join in the festivities!

Allan Walls is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Tangent

Time: Jan 18, 2025 12:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6916802815?pwd=TS9tZi9ZL1NXeVUvOUF4eTg5YjdlZz09&omn=83452232753

Meeting ID: 691 680 2815

Passcode: 678122

And talking about festive events, I plan to release the next installment of AfterStack, with Bud Perrott.

It was recorded while I was away shooting horses and I have not had a chance to watch it yet, but I am sure it will be excellent! Here is a link to the recording - https://youtu.be/eNzNWazeFcI

There are quite a few projects in the works and some waiting to begin, but you can expect to see several new videos in the coming weeks - more on them later.

I would like to wrap things up this week with a non-horse image. This is a piece of art that may be familiar to many of you, though on closer inspection you may see some subtle differences between this version and the original, a painting by Salvador Dali titled “Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man”.

A poster of this amazing painting was permanently installed over my bed as a young man. It was the first thing I saw every morning and the last at the end of every day. My dear friend and source of inspiration, Patrick Stahel, took time out of his hectic Swiss schedule to add an extra figure to this painting, which he then framed and sent to me for a Christmas gift. In the package was a wonderful letter that was far too flattering to share, and a small mountain of Swiss chocolate, too delicious to share. A photograph of the painting is presented above. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Thank you Patrick!

And that, my friends, is it for another week! I hope to see you at an event or two. Stay warm - not much longer and Spring will be here!

Allan