Horses, Ostriches, and a Couple Zebra

I was feeling in the mood to take some horse photos, so I called upon Casey and his endless connections to hook me up with some equine subjects. Off to the Fowler farm we headed (as in Jim Fowler, owner of Parks at Chehaw, who happens to be Casey's uncle).

I love the Fowler farm. It's one of my favorite places to do senior sessions, engagement sessions, anytime anywhere sessions. There is a plethora of scenic places to photograph - including old barns, abandoned shacks, rusty cars from the 1950's, fences, bamboo forests, dirt paths, open meadows.....it's a photographer's dream property.
Anyway, they also have several horses so out we went to snap a few pictures. Unfortunately, when we arrived I had a complete creative brain fart and was feeling totally uninspired. Thus follows my rather boring pictures of some horses:

I can't remember the name of this little beauty, but they were working her when we arrived. She's the youngest of the group I think, only 2 years old, and she was fun.



This shot makes me laugh every time I look at it. She was tied to the hitching post here to get groomed after her workout and she was VERY curious about my camera. When I knelt down in front of her though, she wasn't so sure about what I was doing.




This is Casper, who was a very poor model. He had quite a knack for stepping into the perfect golden lighting, and promptly turning his back on me so that I would have a glorious shot of his massive behind. Or, he would be holding beautifully still and looking perfectly regal, and when I would kneel down to take his picture, he would saunter over to stick his velvety nose right on my lens and nudge me around looking for treats.
I even sent Casey over to have a word with him, but he was having none of it.
Note to self: Next time, bring bribes for Casper.








Feeling a little bored and quite uninspired, I was ready to leave the horses so we decided to drive over the wild animal pasture and see if we could get anything over there. Now, the zebras apparently were under the impression that I was a tiger lurking in the Serengeti about to surprise attack them at any moment, so they promptly trotted away at my approach.
Ironically enough, the freaking ostriches were rather interested in us and came right over. This gave me a few heart palpitations, seeing as I have this thing with birds. Specifically, I hate them and consider them to be evil tools of world destruction used by Satan himself.
Here you see a giant male ostrich approaching with purposeful strides on his giant dinosaur-like feet to see what we were all about. What you DON"T see, is Casey behind me whispering, "Oh sweet Mother of Mary, he's coming this way" as he scrambles back towards the car. Seems that I'm not the only one who has a bit of "thing" for fowl. In the name of photography, I took a deep breath and held my ground. You can't let them smell your fear, you know.

Or something like that.


He finds me to be rather uneventful and decides to wander off to do better things.
Like twist his snakey neck around to pick feathers off his butt, and leave a giant ostrich poop about 25 yards further on.





But his girlfriend finds us to be EXTREMELY interesting and walks right up.
Like within 2 feet of me.
Like close enough that she could have stuck her neck out and pecked my eyes out.
Or at least one eye, since the other one was behind the camera lens.
I told Casey to watch out for the male, who I was certain was planning an ambush from the side while his girlfriend distracted us and I had my face behind the camera.



Here she is pondering how tasty my flesh might be. I think she's preparing to tear the hair off my scalp as an appetizer.
Ostriches are carnivores, you know.



Here she concedes that it would be a dang shame to peck me to death because my beautiful 70-200mm lens would crash to the ground and probably break. And even this stupid bird knows THAT would be a travesty.


One more shot --- of the zebras, who have been watching the human-ostrich interaction with trepidation. I think they were just glad to have the ostriches off their backs. I think the ostrich hunt the zebras when no one is watching.



Cue Casey, who would not stop singing "The Circle of Life" as I took my last few shots.