The Barter System ROCKS!

At the Sanctuary where I work, we have 3 excellent staff photographers who do an amazing job showing the world how beautiful our animals are. (See their work here.)

Anyway, I've known Molly Wald (one of our photographers) for several years now and she has taken lots of great photos for the horse department. I found out recently that Molly, who's from New Jersey, used to ride hunter/jumper horses and had years of riding lessons while she was growing up. She approached me a while back about wanting to get back into horses and take horsemanship lessons from me. And so Molly and I have a little arrangement. Every week we get together and she gives me a photography lesson and I give her a horse lesson. From where I'm sitting, it is a SWEET deal. I'm learning so much about my camera, I've even learned what most of the buttons are for! :)

Molly's been extremely generous, has held nothing back and is a great teacher. What a pleasure it's been to learn from her.

So tonight was our lesson and my kids, as always, were happy to have their picture taken. We were playing with continuous focus while the kids jumped on the trampoline. Molly was much better at tracking the kids movement than I was (of course) but I think I managed to capture the shot of the night ----



I LOVE this shot, it was probably more luck than anything, but I'm still thrilled with it.
And here's Molly:


Luke was showing us his airplane that he designed and built all by himself to enter in the County Fair, I loved his expression in this one.


Molly told Brynn that this one is her album cover:


Then we played with metering and silhouettes. I've always wanted to learn how to do this. Cool, huh!


I love my photo lessons! I hope Molly enjoys her horse lessons half as much.

To quote Pat Parelli: "Good, better, best - never let it rest. Get your good better and your better best."

I don't want to ever quit learning.