'Sno' fun ....

.... for ....

.... a pony!

Photographed using a Nikon FE2 camera with Nikkor 55mm lens mounted on a Benbo tripod; first and third pictures taken at about 1/60th sec at f5.6, second picture taken at 1/8th second at f16; all on Kodachrome 64 film rated at ISO 64 and processed normally; no filters used.

Cloudy overcast light about midday, February.

New Forest, Hampshire, England.

The story behind the pictures....

"The New Forest in southern England rarely receives much snowfall during the winter months and when there is snow it seldom lasts for more than a couple of days. One winter, a fairly heavy snowfall overnight meant a good covering of snow in the Forest and, as there had been little wind, much of the snowfall remained on the trees, making for better photographs. However, that day the very cloudy and overcast skies made for some rather lacklustre snowscapes and so I headed into the woodlands looking for subjects to photograph.

"The semi-wild ponies which roam the Forest had a hard time of it as most of their grazing was now under several centimetres of snow, and many had gone into the woods to feed on other vegetation. I noticed this particular pony reaching up to browse the younger, more tender leaves of a Holly tree. Each time he pulled off a leaf the whole branch recoiled and unceremoniously dumped its load of snow onto his head!

"Usually, the ponies wander around as they browse but this pony stood in one place and looked like he might do the same again. Seeing the opportunity of an amusing series of pictures I moved in closer as quickly and carefully as I could, set up the camera and then photographed the pony as he repeated the entire action. In order to emphasise the actual fall of snow from the branches I chose a slowish shutter speed so that the snow blurred.

"The pony remained in the same place and repeated his actions about three times in all. Each time, with snow piling up on his head, the pony would turn to camera with a look of resignation on his face, summing up the kind of day he'd had!"



Geoff Doré


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