The Mayor of Sandy City was so kind to to a brief walk-through of my photo exhibit that is displayed at Sandy City Hall (3rd floor). It can be seen M-F 8am-5pm (closed holidays), the exhibit will be up through Christmas.
Here is a link to her video. https://fb.watch/gY0pK9EzuM/
I have been out to photograph the Onaqui several times this month, just haven’t had time to post the photos yet, but I am nearly ready. Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Onaqui Stallion at Sunset
Hello friends and family. I was lucky enough to be selected to display my work on the 3rd floor of Sandy City Hall. It will be up through December. The address is 10000 S Centennial Parkway, Sandy UT. Hours are M-F 8am-5pm. For those of you in the area stop by and have a look. Here is what the display looks like…
We had a short visit to the Onaqui mustangs earlier this week. We didn’t find the North herd till just before sunset in the burn area. Found most of the South herd were South of Simpson Springs. Great clouds and sunsets!
Finally getting around to processing and posting this second batch of images from my Pryor Mountain trip. I have never taken so many photographs, but I’m glad I did. It just takes so long to sort through many thousands images.
I know there are too many photographs, but I use this site to document the horses I photograph, so I apologize in advance for all of the pictures. As you can see, the Pryor Wild horses live in a magnificent area. The surrounding terrain is nothing short of breath-taking. Enjoy!
I just got tired of processing all of my Pryor Mustang photo’s and I was missing the Onaqui. Headed out a few days ago and photographed both the South and North Herd. I haven’t photographed the Onaqui for nearly a month! Not a lot of fantastic photographs but it was nice to see all of my favorite horses!
If you have watched the documentary “Cloud – Wild Stallion of the Rockies” on PBS/Nature (by Ginger Kathrens), this is her herd. Cloud’s offspring and siblings are in this herd today. The horses are also the reason Ginger started “The Cloud Foundation“, one of the most important and successful wild horse advocacy groups ever.
It took two attempts but I eventually made it back up to photograph the Pryor Mustangs. What an experience! The wildflowers were ridiculously beautiful. The weather was great. It was around 68 degrees in the day and cooler at night. These wild horses are indeed beautiful and easy to fall in love with! If you decide to go, be sure to check in with The Pryor Mountain Mustang Center in Lovell, WY. These folks are great. They will tell you exactly where the horses are and the best way to get there! PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT THE ROADS WITHOUR REALLY GOOD TIRES! The roads are absolutely brutal. The Pryor Mountain Mustang Center does tours for a fee and it will sure save you a lot of grief unless your vehicle is up to the task of getting to the top of the mountain.
I have never taken so many photographs in a trip, and these are the result of going through less than half of my photographs. The horses are magnificent and in great health. As you can see, there is a bit of snow left, and the horses enjoy standing in the snow to cool off and perhaps get some relief from the bugs. I hope to get up to visit this herd once more before winter.
It has been a couple of weeks since I was there and I hope to finish processing my photographs later this week, then I will post the balance of my images…
As you can see by the blood on the mothers legs, this foal is a newborn. Probably delivered the day we photographer them, June 1, or possibly May 29. We didn’t want to get too close, but as we observed the foal it seemed to be exhausted. Thankfully mom was very protective and kept all horses away from her newborn.
Several hours later, we saw the foal with mom ON THE RUN through the thick dust! The foal looked GREAT! It might even have blue eyes! What a beautiful sight!
I have wanted to photograph the Pryor Mountain Wild Horses for a long time. The lead stallion was called “Cloud” and Ginger Kathrens, (founder of The Cloud Foundation) has produced many movies and written several books on these horses and Cloud in particular. Cloud has since passed, but these horses are magnificent and live in a spectacular area in Montana. In the winter they live in the red-rock lower areas. In the spring, they migrate to the beautiful wild-flower covered meadows surrounded by pine trees.
I was probably 3-4 weeks too early. The very rough 4-wheel drive road (Burnt Timber Road) was very rugged. I nearly made it to the upper meadows but unfortunately snow made the road impassable on this day. I don’t believe the horses had migrated up this far either, but I could be wrong. The horses I did find were in good shape if not a bit skinny. They are smaller than the Onaqui mustangs.
Anyway, I was able to find and photograph over 20 horses in very different conditions than the Onaqui. I hope to return soon to get to the upper meadows and continue my interaction with these beautiful wild horses. I even found a few bighorn sheep as an added bonus!
I haven’t had a chance to post at least three trips to Onaqui. The latest trip was on April 28. So many photographs to process! But I did get a once-in-a-lifetime sequence I thought I would get posted. I believe the band stallion is Valentino (grey stallion). He is chasing another stallion, (the red one), at full-speed! The red stallion steps on a slick cow pie with his left front leg (image 25-27). His leg goes out from under him. He eventually hits the ground at full-speed. Notice that even while he is sliding, he is still trying to bite the grey stallion (image 57-62).
Unfortunately they eventually go behind other horses and I lose focus, but the red horse is still trying to fight (or defend himself) from the grey stallion. The red horse immediately got up and spent the rest of the afternoon taunting the gray band stallion. More images to come.
Finally made time to get back to photograph the Onaqui. I had been below freezing all week, so I was able to navigate the frozen roads unlike weeks ago in the mud. We found the herd that was usually on the South side of Davis mountain on the East of Davis. There were 100 horses in this group. After photographing for a couple of hours, we decided to try and find another group for the evening shoot. We spotted them North of the trough watering hole on the other side of the ravine. Luckily everything was frozen so we were able to cross. Great lighting! So many opportunities. Weather was 20degrees and windy but worth every frozen minute. The herd was in good health and great spirits. Lots of activity. As usual, a remarkable day with the Onaqui.
