2011 Jacksonville Winter Series Hunter Jumper Show Photo Gallery| Horses in the South

Ljubov Kochetova on Royce. She didn't place at this show, but this is a cool picture of her and of the indoor arena at night at Green Cove Springs, FL. I have gotten other press releases where she has won at the WEF.

Finally! Here is my photo gallery for the Jacksonville Winter Series, January 2011. I got a new camera just days before this show series started and I didn’t have a lot of time to figure it out, but I got some pretty good pictures from it anyway. All photos are copyright © Teri Rehkopf, HorsesintheSouth.com

As usual, I always end up taking too many (in the thousands), so I have to take the time to go through all of them to select the ones I like best. I got the new camera body this year as my other one kinda ‘froze’ on me so I couldn’t use the menu ($180 to repair, but now I have 2 cameras to use). My new Sony SLT has the newer pellicle (translucent) mirror technology which gives real-time, phase-detect auto-focus shooting really fast speeds and it’s quiet since it doesn’t use multiple mirrors. Since I’m not a professional photographer and my husband won’t let me spend the really “big bucks” for a camera, we did a lot of research on this camera before we bought it. The $5,000 and over professional camera bodies can match the speed of my camera but they’re still not capable of real-time auto-focus between shots like mine is. Plus all of my lens match this camera body and you know how much long lens can cost!

We went to purchase the camera just days before the show series started, so I was frantically reading the little manual trying to figure out the differences and how it worked. The big grand prix classes for the Jax Winter Series are held in an indoor arena and all but one was at night. Not so great for a amateur and her new camera; not so great for even a professional photog!

Last year most of the pictures of the fast-moving jumpers came out fuzzy and had “trails”, but this year they were much better. I still couldn’t get a crisp shot on a lot of them, but they don’t have the as much of the unfocused trails that you get when shooting speed shots in low light without a tripod. My lens isn’t long enough to use a tripod and I need to move quickly between where the jumps are positioned, so I just pick a place close to a few jumps and shoot.

Rodrigo Pessoa on HH Let's Fly - 1st place victory canter

I don’t have any other place to go to do a test run to take speed shots of horses at night and in an indoor arena. Even my other “virtual” photographer, Rob Bowman, who lives in the Ft. Meyers area won’t travel any distance to take these kind of shots and he has all of the right equipment! I really commend and admire Greg Miesel of Flashpoint Photography/Media Services for the amazing shots that he gets in these conditions.

He does shoot with a flash to get really good pictures. His camera is so much heavier than mine, that I almost dropped it when he said to hold it to see how much it weighed. It has a large internal battery, but when using the flash, he can only get just enough shots to make it through the class. So he doesn’t take that many shots, but he gets really good ones – he is really good. Flashpoint has had their photos on seven or more Dover Saddlery covers, plus many other magazines use their photos for covers they are so good. When Robbie Meisel isn’t interviewing the winners, then staying up late to write the press release about it or pouring through all of the photos they took each day of the event, she helps out shooting other arenas that are going on that day.

Greg is also a web programmer on top of being a photographer extraordinaire. He has developed a program that allow them to quickly view their shots and catalog them. When he isn’t in the midst of horse show season, he is re-designing this program to sell to other photographers as many have asked him for it.

Anyway, so you can get a feel for ‘being there’, I made these galleries for your to peruse. Some of the shots are in multiples and aren’t necessarily good, but you get to see the sequence of the rider over the jumps and how they are looking in the air to the next jump, giving you the feel of the athleticism required by these riders.

Wilhelm Genn on Happy Z - "The Buck"

I also finally got pictures of Happy Z and his famous “buck” during the winners gallop. Lot’s of great shots of Wilhelm Genn and his son, Theo. They always do well at this series.

I think it is so cool to get the press releases in to put on our website (we are a large news aggregator) that have many riders and horses that won or placed at Winter Equestrian Festival (WEF) who were just in Green Cove Springs the day before. Many of the more famous riders that will win in the daylight and open, airy rings at the WEF find it a challenge to even place at Green Cove Springs indoor area at night. It a great place for them to stop for a warm-up on their way down south for the WEF and maybe they’ll get lucky one year and win the $100,000 FEI CSI*** World Cup grand prix.

Either click on the images to view & use the arrows for next or use the “View As PicLens” option until I can upload a file to view as a slideshow. The PicLens option gives you a slideshow and the images are at the bottom.

$31,500 Green Cove Springs, CSI Welcome Stakes, International, Jan. 14th

Kent Farrington and Up Chiqui won this; Rodrigo Pessoa and HH Let’s Fly placed 7th in this one. You’ll see a series of shots where Beezie Madden had a “gentle” fall on her horse Mademoiselle. At the very first jump, her mare landed and crumpled her right leg to the ground. Her shoe twisted on landing. There’s a cute shot of Beezie on one knee looking at her mare and seeing her hold her leg up. Of course the show vet and farrier ran to the rescue to pull the shoe so Mademoiselle could leave the ring. I have gotten press releases in for the WEF where Mademoiselle and Beezie have won classes, so she evidently is fine

[View with PicLens]

$100,000 Green Cove Springs, CSI*** World Cup Qualifier Grand Prix, International, Jan. 15th

But, Rodrigo and Let’s Fly won this one! Aaron Vale won it last year. He got a 5th place on Quito and also rode Paparrazi 10, but didn’t place.

[View with PicLens]

$25,000 North Florida Hunter Jumper Association (NFHJA) Hope Charity Grand Prix, National, Jan 23rd

Wilhelm Genn cleaned up in this GP winning the class on Happy Z, getting 3rd on Copyright 3 and 4th on Kalinero Du Galete. His son, Theo, got a 6th on Ariado.

Wilhelm Genn on Happy Z - check out his form. I was right next to this jump!

This gallery also has photos of a Hope Therapy child rider and Mary Baer of our local news station talking about Hope Charity. She is both a hunter rider and a dressage rider, plus one of the nicest people you will ever meet.

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$25,000 NFHJA Jacksonville A to Z Grand Prix, Jan. 29th

There were only 2 riders/horses in the jump-off. Meg O’Mara and Sinatra IV narrowly beat Wilhelm Genn and Happy Z (Happy’s buck was bigger, too, as if he was mad that he didn’t win, lol).

[View with PicLens]