Gleneagles 2013 - Monty Roberts Tour

Gleneagles and the lovely Scots!

Last time we were in Scotland for a Monty event the venue was Ingliston, however, this time we have returned to the wonderful Gleneagles venue. A huge hanger of an arena that ticks all the boxes for me. Guest wifi, even spread lighting (although it is fluorescent tubes!), attractive wood finish and great acoustics. Just as k our sound engineer who loves the fact that there is very little chance of feedback from bounced sound!

I always talk about having the best seat in the house when I'm on tour with Monty and Kelly. It's true! This was one of the horses in the afternoon being checked out by Jake. Remember in the previous posts I've mentioned that Monty and Kelly don't have access to the horse before the show, they are only allowed to see what the problems are. Look but don't touch!! This horse had a real problem with jumping fences with fillers. You can see the response we got when free schooled to the jump. It was a resounding…..NO! 

For the photographic folks out there, this was taken using a D800 set at ISO 3200, and a shallow aperture. No noise to speak off, and action frozen. The D800 is a lovely powerful camera, that does the job reliably!

OK, so now fast forward through the horse checking to the evening and Kelly selected this horse for the Private Audience. The P.A. is for those who are members of the Intelligent Horsemanship organisation and their guests. This gives me another horse to film, and the smaller audience a chance to see something more training orientated. Here's the same horse after Kelly has worked with him. 


Now I've not whir balanced these images they are straight from Aperture. Camera was set to AWB and there is a hint of colour cast! ;-)



Let's just have a look at the two side by side in a bit more detail and slightly larger. The left version is balanced, and levels adjusted correct, and the one of the right is the same one as above. The colours are far better, the white filler is white, the blue mounting boxes are a little more vibrant and the horse is now the right colour! There will be a separate post (me sounding off) on something that happened on Facebook recently and I'll use this to illustrate part of it!!



Finally, a big warm hearted thank you to all of the audience at Gleneagles. Your generosity continues to astound me, and your kind words are always appreciated! You raised close to £100 for the charity raffle of the signed Monty Roberts print, and loved the new pictures. Feedback was really good.

I'm seriously considering suggesting to Sue that we move up here…...