I used to take English-style horse-riding lessons when I was a kid, in fact, my mother even owned a horse for a little while, named Sleepy. I don’t know the type, but it was brown. I can’t remember how long I took the lessons for, but I do remember feeling pretty nervous on horseback, mostly because I don’t deal with heights very well. We didn’t have a whole lot of money back then… and also now as well, I guess, but somehow my mother made paying for the lessons work. I even had the tall black boots, the weird black helmet, and everything. I don’t remember having the funky pants though, but I may be repressing that particular memory.

I do not, however, have a lot of experience working with, or even being around, larger ‘heavy horses’… other than taking photos of them, of course. These are always some of the more dynamic Events at the VKH Fair. There are always large crowds for the Heavy Horse Pull, and it’s a great photo opportunity when the Horses are straining to pull the thousands of pounds on the sled. Then there’s the younger Horses being shown off in the centre ring, and their owners running alongside them.

This year I was invited to be the Event Photographer by the VKH Agricultural Society for the Fair, they even gave me my own lanyard and plastic sleeve for my event pass, so I had a bit more access to the events than usual… although, in the past, I’ve managed to get pretty close to the action at the Fair. The first time I ever took photos of the Event, was way back in 1994-95, when I shot the Demo Derby for my final project for the Photography course prerequisite for my Journalism diploma at Algonquin College. I actually wandered into the main ring while the cars were smashing into each other, and stood on the concrete blocks separating the cars from the crowd. I got yelled at the by volunteer firemen, but I did get an A+, so it all worked out fine.

…anyway. These are photos of the Heavy Horse Events from the second day of the Fair. There are a lot of photos in this post, seriously, like a LOT of them… but, they’re all featuring horses, so it’s totally worth it for you to click on each of the three photo galleries below. Yes, three whole galleries, apparently WordPress only allows so many photos inside a Gallery at one time, and I reached that limit a few times over with this post.

So, yeah, if you’re into it, go ahead and click on the first photo in each Gallery to get the carousels going. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did taking them… it’s good to be productive again.

…actually, while you’re here, I just wanted to quickly let you know that Comments are most welcome, and if it asks you for an email address, don’t worry I’ll never share it and neither will WordPress… commenting is all very easy peasy lemon squeezy.