May started with some good friends from Colorado visiting us. The Onaqui wild horse herd will be rounded up this July and culled down to its Bureau of Land Management Herd Management level, and they wanted to see all the horses before it happened. My daughter and son in-law also went. It was a great day.
The second weekend I went to a branding to help my friend Seth Hadlock. I didn’t end up helping much. Most of the time when I go to help my friends with ranch work I want to take as many photographs as I can but I always end up working instead. He had plenty of help so I stayed behind the camera all day.
I ran into a friend I used to rodeo with back in the day, Baylor Roche. I got to talking to him about when they would be practicing so I could invite myself to come and take some photos. I had a great time watching the guys wrestle around in the dirt with an animal that doesn’t want any part of it. It brought back a lot of memories I haven’t thought about for awhile. It’s been ten years since I last threw one down. And part of me was missing it after watching them. They asked me if I wanted to throw some down for old time sake, I declined. I’m pretty sure if I did I would be in the corner of the arena throwing up for being so out of shape!
His boy had just got a new horse, and he was all business riding him around!
The next day me and my friend, Kylee went for a ride up Logan canyon, in Northern Utah. What a beautiful place! We followed a little creek up a canyon scattered with beaver ponds. When we were on our way back I talked her into letting me try and get some images of her riding her horse, Breazy around some spots I thought would make for some good compositions. There was a neat old livestock fence that bended around on top of a knoll. I asked her if she would walk along the side of it, she said that would be fine, but then she suggested that she would like to run along side the fence. I said sure, but she could tell that wasn’t what I had in my mind. She says to me something along the lines of “Get used to it if you are going to be taking pictures with girls!” I had to laugh, she was right.
The first couple passes along the fence went pretty good. But about the third time she ran down the fence her horse decided that the cool mountain air, and getting all worked up she would put her head down start bucking! It only lasted for a fraction of a second but I was able to catch it, and both me and Kylee, got a good laugh out of it.
Photography and horses are my life, but coming in not far behind is fly fishing. Just like photography it takes me to places I never would go to otherwise. Me and a buddy Bill Shore, found an afternoon to hit the river. Good times!
I finished out the month on the desert photographing the Onaqui with my photographer friend Sam Cooper. It seems like every time we meet up out there the wind is blowing fifty miles an hour! It was so dusty you could barely keep your eyes open and keep the dust out. The west desert could sure use some rain!
Images by Alex Hover 