The Jocks

Here is Helen Vanek after another successful win on Hombre Natural. She won the first three races opening day at Fort Erie Race Track for the hat trick. I used f-6.3 at 1/2000th sec at iso 900 to capture this image. The needed the fast shutter speed because the horse was still very excited after the race and moving around quite a bit. The f6.3 aperture was to acquire the most depth of field I could get an still keep my iso reasonable.

The Old Grey Mare

The old grey mare named Sandys Hurricane gets challenged by Our Gabrielle in the seventh race.

Finish with Style

I used manual mode with a start up setting of 1/2000th sec @ f-6.3 and auto iso to deal with the clouded sky. Iso in this pic ended up at 1250. I like the double image of this finish on the monitor.

Post to Post

I always try to find backgrounds that are not too busy so your focus of attention is on the action of the horses. Here I cropped out the sky and tree tops because they distracted the eye from my subjects. Use creative cropping to improve your compositions.

A Lot of Gull

Nice image I grabbed at the track of this gull flying around the grandstands. He was looking for hand outs but the bettors weren't interested in birds they were there to see horses.

The Giant Within

I love horse racing but it's not always fun and games. In the eight race on opening day at Fort Erie Race Track yesterday this great 5 year old champion named The Giant Within took a terrible fall and broke his front leg. Here is probably the last image of him healthy right before the race. Little did anyone suspect the horror that was about to happen minutes later.

The jockey, Christopher Griffith was thrown off his mount but appeared to be unhurt as he chased down the terrified horse. Meanwhile owners, trainers, horsemen, track officials swarmed on the scene.

They removed his saddle as quick as they could and tried control him. The following images are very graphic and should be viewed at your discretion.

Sadly there is nothing that can be done for this poor horse and I am sure he will need to be put down when they get him back to the stables. My heart goes out to all who suffered from this loss.

Opening Day

Traditionally I like to go shoot the ponies on opening day at Fort Erie race track in Ontario.