Michelle Wrighton Fine Art and Photography

I can’t help myself, I take thousands of photographs of everything around me, both for reference material for my artwork and because my camera is just another medium to create art.  I don’t always have time to go through all my photos and select my favorites to display, but the other day I realized that my photography galleries were very outdated and thought I had better add some new ones.  This is just a few of the new additions, the rest rest can be seen in the Landscape and Animal& Wildlife Photography Galleries.  These photos were all taken within a short distance of my home, except the Tawny Frogmouth which was found a little further south.  Enjoy!

Harvest Landscape © 2010 Michelle Wrighton | South West Photography

Sunset Silhouette © 2010 Michelle Wrighton | South West Photography

Long Shadows © 2010 Michelle Wrighton | South West Photography

Dark Sky © 2010 Michelle Wrighton | South West Photography

Up Close and Personal - Tawny Frogmouth © 2010 Michelle Wrighton | South West Photography

The 10th Light Horse Bunbury Troop also put on a riding and Tent Pegging display at the Dardanup Heavy Horse Show at Heritage Park.  Although Tent Pegging originated as a Military maneuver in which cavalry soldiers would gallop through enemy camps, using their lances and swords to remove tent pegs to collapse tents and cause confusion in order to gain the upper hand in a surprise attack.  Over time, tent pegging was used as a cavalry drill for weapons practice and as part of Military tournaments and competitions.  The Australian State Mounted Police also used Tent Pegging for demonstrations of their riding skills, but it was not until 1964 that the first Australian civilian tent pegging team was formed.  This equestrian sport was recognized Internationally in 1982, and International competitions are now conducted by the Federation Equestre International.

If you would like more information about the equestrian sport of Tent Pegging, please visit the Australian Tent Pegging Association website for more information.

LEST WE FORGET

All images from the Tent Pegging display can be viewed on the Events section of my South West Photography website.

Today was a rather auspicious day – its been a long time coming, but I am very excited to finally be setting up my studio gallery:)  I had planned to just move the boxes in, but got a little carried away and started unpacking everything.  I felt like a kid at Christmas unpacking all of my art supplies, books and art magazines – many of which I havn’t seen for well over 18 months!  My mind is racing with all the things that I want to paint and draw, I really don’t know where to start first – oils, acrylics, colour pencils or something in graphite.  I’d really like to have a go at some plein air oil paintings – all I have to do is step outside my studio for inspiration in every direction, from the beautiful landscape to the baby lambs and calves that are being born on all the farms around here – including ours, but thats a subject for another post, as I really need to catch up on posts that I meant to add last week but ran out of time to!

Following on from my last post with photos of the Clydesdales from the Dardanup Heritage Park Heavy Horse Show, I thought I would share some of the photos of the Team Australia Liberty Horse display performed by brother and sister team, Sam and Sasha Watson from Horses and Horsemen.

The performance shows the willingness, agility, intelligence and responsiveness of these magnificent animals and the incredible relationship that can be created between man and horse.  The display involved a number of different and often very difficult maneuvers, with the liberty horses following instruction and direction from voice and subtle body language cues.  What I found most amazing and awe inspiring was the willingness and enjoyment all the horses displayed, they were clearly enjoying the performance as much as the audience was, even the six month old weanlings were eager and willing to perform even with the noise and distraction of the large crowd and bright orange safety fences!

I was specifically taking photos for reference material for future paintings (and have already flagged a number of shots that are going to make a wonderful new series of paintings) but here are a few shots of the performance which I can *highly* recommend as a must see for anyone who loves horses!

Team Australia Liberty Horse display © 2010 South West Photography

Team Australia Liberty Horse Display © 2010 South West Photography

Team Australia Nine Horse Liberty Display © 2010 South West Photography

Team Australia Two by Two Liberty Horse Display © 2010 South West Photography

Liberty Horse Display © 2010 South West Photography

Roman Riding Liberty Horse display © 2010 South West Photography

Next post will include some photos from the tent pegging display by 10th Light Horse Bunbury Troop.

All images from the Liberty Horse display can be viewed on the Events section of my South West Photography website.

x Michelle

Michelle Wrighton: Animal, Wildlife & Landscape Fine Art & Photography

FACEBOOK: Michelle Wrighton Artist

TWITTER: artistMichelleW

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I was lucky enough to attend the Dardanup Heritage Park Heavy Horse Show on  June 6, 2010 to watch some  magnificent Clydesdales in action and obtain reference material for future paintings.  There was also a riding and tent pegging display by the 10th Light Horse Bunbury Troop and the most amazing liberty horse display by Sam and Sasha Watson of Horses and Horsemen – a performance that every horse owner should see to get a glimpse into the incredible communication and willing relationship that is possible between horse and man – even with foals as young as six months of age!  As a horse owner, the liberty performance was both humbling and awe inspiring and something that you could never tire of watching.

I have hundreds of photos from the day that I havn’t finished sorting through so I will make a couple of blog posts to include a few from the Light Horse and Team Australia Liberty performances as well as the Clydesdales.

Clydesdale horse in harness © 2010 South West Photography

Clydesdale in Harness © 2010 South West Photography

Traditional Clydesdale and cart © 2010 South West Photography

Clydesdale team and wine cart © 2010 South West Photography

Clydesdale team and single axle cart © 2010 South West Photography

Clydesdales in harness © 2010 South West Photography

Proofs from the Clydesdale Show will be uploaded and available for competitors to purchase prints from my photography events website South West Photography next week (the 10gig limit per month wireless internet is never enough and we have been shaped back to dinosaur dialup speed until next week:(

x Michelle

Michelle Wrighton: Animal, Wildlife & Landscape Fine Art & Photography

FACEBOOK: Michelle Wrighton Artist

TWITTER: artistMichelleW

BUY CUSTOMIZED ART POSTERS, ART PRINTS, T-SHIRTS & GIFTS: Zazzle

BUY CARDS, PHOTO PRINTS, CANVAS ART AND FRAMED ART PRINTS: Redbubble

First of all I have to have a whinge about Telstra’s internet services for country clients.  I admit our wireless connection is reasonably good, but  is absolutely pointless when you can’t access the internet anyway because the 10GIG combined maximum Up/download limit per month before getting capped back to 1992 dial-up speed is absolutely, positively pathetic!  C’mon Telstra its 2010! Country people are not stuck in the dark ages without computers, how about doing your country customers a favour, get with the times and give us a few of the options your city customers enjoy!

LOL ok,  rant over for the moment anyway!  It is a genuine complaint, probably aggravated today due to grumpiness from getting very little sleep last night due to my daughters little standarbred mare Sandy having colic.   She is feeling a lot better today thank goodness.  I think it was a combination of new grass after the rains and a change in feed – although she was introduced to it slowly she is a bit of a piggy and stole some of Crickets in the morning.  She’s back on just hay rations for a few days and hopefully won’t have any more problems.

And as for Fostering Dogs 101…or How to fail Fostering 101 in four easy steps:

1) Vow and declare to never have any other breed than Border Collies.

2) Agree to look after my sisters one year old Koolie while she finds him a good home.

3) Before we get half way home decide we will keep him if he fits in with our four Border Collies.

Well the four Border Collies seem to be accepting him into the pack quite well, so it looks like our canine family now consists of 4 collies and a Koolie.  Not quite a Border Collie, but at least he’s a sheepdog:)

The Border Collie Brigade: L to R  Bolt, Zeke, Trinity and Taj at the front

Border Collie Dogs

And Flash the Koolie:

Flash - Australian Koolie dog

Five Feral Farm dogs

Koolies (also known as Coolies/German Coolies) are an Australian developed working dog  predominantly bred to work sheep and have many similarities in personality and nature to Border Collies.  As they have been bred for working ability rather than for conformation show ring/beauty pageant looks, there is a range of variations in size, build and coat colour within the breed according to the terrain and type of work they were required to do.

I have just changed over from using Photoshop CS4 to Lightroom 2.4 for processing my photographs – all I can say is I wish I had done this sooner!  As much as I resist learning new computer programs (fuzzy mummy brain I think), Lightroom is so quick to use compared to CS4, the time out I have taken to learn how to use it is going to be a huge benefit in improving my workflow, especially for batch processing.  Here is a selection of the first images that I have processed through Lightroom from my road trip down south to Boyup Brook.

The only nitpick that I have with Lightroom is the watermarking ability or lack thereof.  I have purchased the mogrify preset which allows me to use my standard watermark…but it places them at the same location in every image, which can obscure important elements of the photograph. Plus I need to make additional copies of the watermark for different opacity and colours so that I can select slightly more subtle watermarks to suit individual images better…either that or just continue to use CS4 and apply the watermarks manually for each image.

Other than that one issue, I can highly recommend Lightroom to any photographer looking to speed up their workflow.

I hope you enjoy these images, some of them will be available for purchase as prints http://southwestphotography.com.au in the near future.

Cheers

Michelle

Orange Flower © 2009 South West Photography

Boyup Brook Farmland © 2009 South West Photography

Boyup Brook Farmland © 2009 South West Photography

Blackwood River, Boyup Brook © 2009 South West Photography

Blackwood River, Boyup Brook © 2009 South West Photography

Rustic Relics, Boyup Brook © 2009 South West Photography

Border Collie, Boyup Brook © 2009 South West Photography

Border Collie, Boyup Brook © 2009 South West Photography

Sometimes life just gets a little bit too stressful, and the best way to deal with it is a few hours in the country re-connecting with nature and the beautiful land that we live in.  Yesterday was one of those days, and what a joy to just take a few hours and enjoy the sunshine and the beauty of our South West.  I rarely go anywhere interesting without my camera in hand, so I do have a few of my favourite shots to share with you all:)

I’m very happy with these for several reasons, firstly every single shot was taken in full manual, and while I have always been pleased with the 50D’s output in the other creative settings that I normally use with changing light/movement situations, I can honestly say that nothing beats pure manual for getting the best images!  Secondly, and this is a biggie for me, I was shooting with the beast (70-200mm 2.8L), but every shot was hand held – the monopod didn’t go on the camera once!  This is truly amazing (to me anyway) as after my first attempt at shooting handheld with the beast when I first got the 50D was a disaster, it was so heavy it made my wrists hurt and every photo had severe camera shake and I never thought I would be able to use it handheld.

Purple Flowers at Harvey ©2009 South West Photography

Rustic Farm Building ©2009 South West Photography

One Tree Hill Boyup Brook ©2009 South West Photography

"panoRAMa" Boyup Brook ©2009 South West Photography

Boyup Brook Farmland in July ©2009 South West Photography

Scarlet Breasted Robin Boyup Brook ©2009 South West Photography

"Bird on a Wire" Boyup Brook ©2009 South West Photography

Donnybrook to Boyup Brook Landscape © 2009 South West Photography

Scarlet Robin, Boyup Brook © 2009 South West Photography

"Flight" Birdwatching in Boyup Brook ©2009 South West Photography

Blackwood River, Boyup Brook ©2009 South West Photography

Boyup Brook at Dusk © South West Photography

Little Lamb backlit by the Sun ©2009 South West Photography

The Golden Hour ©South West Photography

I have to say that I was really pleased with the last two – the little lamb was shot through a ringlock fence and I wasn’t sure if my settings where correct for the lens to blur out the wire strands, but obviously they were (yay for me).  I had to jump out of the car, over a muddy ditch and up a hill to say hi to three very friendly horses that came over to the fence when I called them.  It was the golden hour and the light from the sinking sun behind them was just magnificent while this big bay gelding happily posed for me to practice my silhouette shots:) In the full size, his chin whiskers look like threads of pure gold.

Ok, I think thats more than a few photos (I know, I just can’t help myself)…although I do have heaps more that I will add at some stage when I get time to process them.  I’d love to know which of the photos is your favourite and why, so please feel free to leave me a comment:)

Cheers

Michelle

South West Photography

The Standardbred Pleasure and Performance Horse Association of WA held the annual Winter Gala at the Perth Horse and Pony Club grounds in Herdsman.  I am totally biased towards the breed (having two of my own) and I strongly believe that they are *the* most under-rated breed in the horse world.  Thankfully more people like those that turned out for this show are seeing the incredible possibilities with this versatile breed as pleasure and preformance horses.

And I have to say that the presentation of these Standardbreds is absolutely impeccable and puts alot of other ‘fancy’ breeds to shame!

Coloured Standardbred © South West Photography

Standardbred Breed Show © South West Photography

Standardbred Breed Show © South West Photography

Standardbred Breed Show © South West Photography

Standardbred Breed Show © South West Photography

Standardbred Breed Show © South West Photography

Standardbred Breed Show © South West Photography

Standardbred Breed Show © South West Photography

Part bred Standardbred © South West Photography

Standardbred Breed Show © South West Photography

Standardbred Breed Show © South West Photography

Standardbred Breed Show © South West Photography

Standardbred Dressage © South West Photography

All of the proof images for the In Hand, Ridden and the Dressage tests can be viewed and ordered online at South West Photography.

Well after getting a taste of Cutting action at the last bit of the Ian Francis Cutting Clinic that I saw after the Paint Horse Champs back in February, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to watch two days of cutting on the 16th and 17th May.

Cutting Horse © South West Photography

Cutting Horse © South West Photography

Cutting Horse © South West Photography

Cutting Horse © South West Photography

Cutting Horse © South West Photography

Cutting Horse © South West Photography

All images from both days events can be viewed and prints purchased online at South West Photography

I received a very distressed phone call today from a client, her daughters much loved elderly Rhodesian Ridgeback had been diagnosed with an inoperable tumour, and unfortunately the only thing that could be done was to humanely put her to sleep.  Like so many people, Lady’s owner didn’t have many good photos of her, and my client asked me if I could go down to the vet’s surgery and take some photos before Lady was laid to rest before the end of the day.

I know what its like to loose a treasured companion, and I also know how important good images are to help heal the pain of their passing, so I was more than happy to help.  Luckily there was a small garden outside the vet surgery so I was able to get some beautiful shots of this grand old girl that I hope will keep her memory alive for her family forever.

Rhodesian Ridgeback Portrait - © South West Photography

Rhodesian Ridgeback Portrait - © South West Photography

Rhodesian Ridgeback Portrait - © South West Photography

Rest In Peace Lady, you were loved and will be missed.