A new toy

Back before Christmas, back before snow, back before frozen water buckets and constant stall cleaning, I bought myself a new camera. I was so impressed by the photos that folks were posting on their blogs, I thought, "I wanna do that!"   So, I read up on what people were saying about good digital cameras for beginners and bought a Canon (oops) Nikon 5100. (I thought about the Canon, but actually bought the Nikon.) Today, I took it out of the box.

I found myself with some free time (what's that?) after I turned all the ponies out this morning, so I dug out the camera and opened it up. Mountains of cords and plugs and batteries and lenses later, I glanced up to discover snow swirling around outside. "Eureka!" I dumped the instruction manual and raced outside. Well, race is a relative term right? I still had to put on 3 layers, top and bottom, my heavy muck boots, my gloves, etc.. Compared to the astronauts preparing for lift off, I was fast and I had my new camera in hand. I only had time for a few shots though, on auto focus, before commonsense kicked in and I realized how wet the snow was. I stopped then to bring the poor ponies in. In any case, here are the first few shots from my fancy camera! I'm super excited.

Meet Annie.



Annie is a 19-year-old Hackney pony, sold to a kill buyer by the Amish after an unknown number of years as a cart pony. She's nearly as skittish as Thyme, although she's well-trained. The 11-year-old rode her for a while, but after a serious injury last summer (Annie's, not the 11-year-old's), Annie's officially retired here at Tyche's Run, aka the Home for Wayward Ponies. If you know Hackneys you can also imagine that she wasn't a great riding horse anyway, but isn't she lovely in her snow blanket?

And of course, a shot of our mascot Tyche, begging for attention. Or possibly just thinking, "Let me in lady, it's cold out here." Maybe she's been talking to the chickens.