Announcing the arrival....

of my new camera:  a Nikon D3100.  I've been trying to avoid the DSLR route but just couldn't take it any more.  So now I've got a new toy on which I can spend yet more money equiping it with lenses, filters, all kinds of crap! 

A new camera calls for something to photograph, happily we had an event happening in our small town, our annual rodeo!  I don't believe I've ever actually attended a rodeo so it was a new and interesting experience.  First of all, this is small town stuff so there weren't 20 guys in each event.  One event had three entrants and only two showed up.  I mean these guys are risking life and limb for probably a couple hundred dollars.  But it was fun.  The announcer couldn't run the sound system very well, there were equipment glitches, some of the entrants were downright lousy but, did I say, it was fun. 

Here are a few of the photos I took.  What impressed me first about the camera was that I could get three photos of an eight second bull ride.  Of course these are all hand-held and I'm far from steady as a rock on a good day.  The distance to the bull riding was probably 100 yards (or meters, I'm guessing here folks!).  The distance to the calf roping was probably half that.  The camera has a 'sport' setting that I used.  I'm going to have to work with that a bit because I had trouble getting the autofocus on the right spot.  Still, for photos from a camera where I've taken a total of four photos before last night, I'm a happy camper. 

Here's an airborne bull and rider!

Here I got that horse doing it's thing. 

One of the bucking horses was a fairly new mother.  After she had shown the rider who was boss they let her colt out into the arena for a little intro to mom's work area.  I love the way they look so much alike.

Local girls make good with some precision riding.  One of these kids was still a pre-teen!

This bronc rider made it all the way dispite the best efforts of the horse.

I love the look on this guy's face.  He knows his ride is ending really soon.

There are plenty of hats in the way, heads and questionable composition but having never photographed a sporting event in my life (and sitting in the very crowded stands, I'm good.  For sure I'm going to keep the Canon SX210IS around as a pocket camera, it is so small, handy and good at that point and shoot thing, but the Nikon will be my new photography 'hobby horse'.

Gotta go.  Have a good one!