My latest craze

Not only do I enjoy photographing my critters, I also love to take short video. Lately I've delved into taking still frames from the video. I've posted a couple previously, but today's post will be completely dedicated to this newest obsession of mine. The only thing I don't like is that video stills have a lot lower resolution than regular photos, but if they didn't I would run out of storage space on my SD card quickly!

My Christmas letter this year featured a still as the background picture. One morning I headed outside for work, but the ponies were on the far side of the pasture at the bottom of the small hill. Zeplin looked up and when he saw me, he immediately hustled up the hill towards me. The ladies followed. I just LOVE my ponies :-) I don't have any sophisticated programs to manipulate the resulting images, so I just use my limited resources.

What a neat backdrop for my holiday ramblings!

The evening of the blizzard a couple weeks ago, I watched my crazy ponies playing in the falling snow. I liked the stills where they stirred up clouds of snow around their swiftly moving feet. Their legs appeared to be swallowed up by swirls of powdery snowflakes.

This past weekend when I took the photos from yesterday's blog, I also took some video of the horses goofing around. Jazzy stood next to me at the top of the hill (the steeper part). Caly picked her way down the slope through the dried weeds. Jazzy decided to pursue her. Halfway to the bottom of the hill, Jazzy picked up a gallop and flew past Caly. Together they raced across the back of the pasture and back up the hill on the other side. Zeplin watched them and wanted to join the fun.

Zeplin galloping furiously to catch up. "Hey guys, wait for me!!!"

The ladies reached to top of the hill again:

Channeling his inner Thoroughbred, Zeplin closes on Caly:

Wow, Zeplin really has quite a long stride! Towards the end of the same sequence, Jazzy practiced for the pro rodeo tour by giving a little buck:

See the goat watching her, thinking, "What the hell are you doing?!"

Later, Zeplin displayed a similar disregard for gravity:

I love how you see Quimby observing their antics in the foreground.

Another great thing about taking stills is that I can clearly demonstrate the suspension in Zeplin's trot and his athleticism.

Poor Zeplin, it's taking me forever to get all those burrs out of his mane and tail. He looks like he's hovering above the ground in the first few pics. Zeplin loves to prance. He has a very showy trot where he throws his tail over his back, arches his neck, and moves almost in slow motion, exaggerating each step. It's beautiful to watch and always makes me smile.

That's all for now (quite a few frames here), but rest assured there will be more at a later date!