Snow Day!

Despite living in Canada, we don't tend to see a lot of freezing weather. Snow is even more rare - sometimes we don't get any all winter! You wouldn't know that today, though! We got so much snow that my office was closed and I got to take a snow day. Here's a few pictures of Sophie - she was feeling quite silly. (Of course Bridget is doing great too, but she wasn't in to showing off for the camera today :)

Fluffy

Is it a bad thing that I want to clip both ponies simply for aesthetics?

Fuzxy, fuzzy pony. I clipped her jawline and now it looks weird. But her halter wasn't fitting before, so still winning?

Oh goodness are they hairy and rough looking right now in their natural winter state. I'll leave them be, but they are beyond fluffy and it seems to have really come on just in the past week.

So much hair! It's been so warm and mild out too, let's hope they don't know something I don't re: the coming weather.

Sophie especially looks bad...her winter coat is really light colored and there isn't much of a shine to be found. Add in true pony level coat thickness and some generous helpings of dirt and it looks like she's not been groomed for months.

Can't even. It's all mucky INSIDE her ears too

Forelock decor

At least Bridget is the color of dirt. Also, I feel like Bridget is kind of an oversized Thelwell pony anyway and it kind of suits. Sophie is more of a small sport horse build so the pony level fluffiness makes her look like she's neglected.

I photoshopped her to be more gold colored, and definitely smoothed out the more moth eaten looking parts,  lol

I guess this is the trade off for those lovely glossy dappled coats ponies seem to so easily have in the summer?

Anyway, not much of a point to this post....TLDR: My ponies (especially Sophie) are looking feral, despite all my best efforts. I used up my riding time on Sunday just grooming them. They looked only marginally better. The end :)

Talk To Me Of Cameras

I've been blogging for years with media provided by my cell phone. The results have been hit and miss, at best :)

I do like how this one turned out, despite it being dark.

I know pretty much all of you out there have better media content than me, and I'm envious. I want to up my game.

My awesome photo from my last ride in the indoor. I can choose one: motion or less than ideal light. If there are both my pictures look like this.

What camera would you recommend a noob like me? I've been looking at point and shoot ones for a while now, and the specs and reviews are often contradictory and confusing. (Is it actually better than my phone, or no? Does reviewer grandma not understand USB cables or Bluetooth,  or is it really that hard to get the pictures off the camera? Your guess is as good as mine.) So, I haven't pulled the trigger on anything.

My cell phone makes my horses look so muddy! Oh. Wait.
Seriously tho, this is as good a picture as I can currently capture of a moving subject on a cloudy day. Unfortunately, the majority of our west coast days resemble this, and my horses do tend to move around! For every 10 pictures I take, there will be one barely usable one like this and the rest are garbage. It'd be nice to be able to take more usable pictures of my horses. Mud remover filter would be a bonus :)

Basically, I'd like something that can capture crisp images of a moving pony, preferably even in low light (for example, riding in the indoor, or outside on an average winter day here). Which reminds me, it needs to be somewhat sturdy to survive life on the raincoast with horses.

Nice quality video is great, but less of a need for me. I'm not fussed if I don't have a huge zoom or I can't record an entire lesson. Short video clips are fine with me.

So, fellow bloggers, what are you using?