Rodeo Weekend

Well we had a Great Weekend had the Arkansas Rodeo Finals!! Sean ended the year in First place and won a Trophy Saddle and Buckle. I'm so proud of him! He placed second in the average at the finals and won one of the three rounds. Here is a picture of all the steer wrestlers in the Finals...they are all short and stocky...the typical build of the Steer Wrestler. ha!Thursday Night Sean was the last guy to run his steer. The time to beat was a 5.7. Sean completely showed off, throwing down his steer in 4.7 seconds, winning the round! I was super ticked because my camera died about 2 minutes before Sean's run..go figure..

Friday Night Sean drew a steer that was a very fast...and I mean fast.

Just FYI there are many many different factors in having a good run on a steer. The bulldogger has to be good, the horse has to be good, the hazing horse has to be good, and the steer HAS to be good. Other wise, things go wrong.

Sean's Steer was so fast that he didn't catch him until the very end of the pen making his time a long 8 seconds. This really disappointed Sean because it put him third in the average instead of first...the photo below really made me feel bad for him. You can tell he was a little sad.

Saturday Night Sean drew another sucky steer that almost tripped Frosty, his horse, but somehow Sean caught the steer and had another long time. His total time of all three nights was 22.3 which normally would be horrible, but because the Steers were bad he ended up second in the average. His spirits picked up on Saturday and his goofy self showed up during the awards ceremony. I asked him to take a picture with his buckle and to smile...

...this is what I got.

Then I told him to shut his mouth and smile and I got this....Finally he smiled. I swear...taking a picture of Sean with a normal smile on his face is like pulling teeth!
Here is Sean's Saddle. It's a really nice tooled Cactus Saddle.

Here's his new buckle. I already put it on his belt. Guess it won't be shiny for much longer after he steer wrestles in it a couple times!

We had a really great time hanging out at the Arkansas Finals Rodeo this year! Every night we hung out after the rodeo with everyone and they played guitars and talked about rodeo stories...which turned out to be quite interesting and quite hilarious. Well we're rodeo free until weekend after next where we will go to Ft Smith for the Regional Rodeo Finals (which includes mostly people from AR, OK, & part of TX.) Sean leads the year in the Regional Association by about 300.00 so he HAS to do really good in the finals to win the year and the saddle and buckle. So keep him in mind weekend after next!!

HELP I Heart Faces!!

Help! I'm new at photography so I thought I would participate in the I Heart Faces Constructive Criticism thingy today.

My husband is a steer wrestler (aka bulldogger) for those of you who don't know (that's not him pictured below though) anyway I bought my Canon Rebel XS to learn to take photographs before I spend the "bigger bucks" on a more advanced camera. I bought it specifically to take Rodeo pics.

So help me out here. I was using a 300x zoom lens, not on a tripod because lets face it, who wants to carry around a tripod to rodeos?? It was really sunny obviously and I got great detail in the dirt but the bulldogger's face is way out of focus and the exposure is weird. I played with this photo in Corel PaintShopPro but this is the best I could get.

I'm not gonna lie, I have no clue how to tell you what settings I used because I've already deleted this picture off my camera, but I'm pretty sure I was in Tv mode and it was up close to has fast as I could get it to go.

***Edited to add
Focal Length: 281.00mm
Exposure Time: 0.0003s (1/4000
Aperture: f/5.6
ISO equiv: 800
White Balance: Manual
Metering Mode: Center Weight
Exposure: Shutter Priority
Thanks Jessica!! Didn't know that was possible!***


What can I do to make these more clear??? Help!

Also... How in the world do you take great photos at Night Rodeos?? If I turn the ISO up to get a clean shot I've got white noise galore. With the largest aperture I can't get a clear shot, it's too blurry. I've been told to get a lens with a larger aperture, 4.5 is what I'm using now. I can't afford to buy a new lens right now... any suggestions???

Thank you for all the help I can get!!!

Look What I Did

*****You will have to excuse the quality of the Photos today. For some reason my computer here at work, (where I'm supposed to be working not blogging) is not correctly displaying the color or the brightness of the photos so I can't tell if they are too bright or too dark. I've tried to adjust every setting but I think the monitor is just about to die. ****

I got Crafty Last night!! I'm on a pretty tight budget and I'd love to go to a high end home furnishing store and just go crazy buying picture frames and fancy things to decorate my house with, but I'm suck with the Dollar Store so I'm working with what I've got here... I think it turned out pretty good! Again...the photo quality is gross.

Before. (I put the photos on the wall on the Right) Excuse my dirty house.
After. See how much better!

I was tired of looking at plain yellow walls in my hallway. I have bought some prints on e-bay that I'm going to frame and put on the left side of the hallway but I want some really nice barn wood frames for those prints so I'm waiting until I can purchase them. On the other side of the hallway I decided to put of a little collage of pictures. Eventually I would like to get barn wood frames for these photos but these Document Frames from the Dollar store for $2.99 will have to do for now.

First I took some plain white cardboard I got at the Dollar Store for $1.00 (for five small sheets) and painted them with the leftover paint I had from painting my Kitchen. The color just so happens to be a shade of green that I don't remember the name of.

As Sean was leaving for they gym I started to paint. He said, "Jenna! Go on the back porch." to which I replied.. "then I can't watch TV." Then Sean said, "Sometimes I think you are just trying to ruin the carpet so you have an excuse to get new carpet." I then mumbled under my breath "You're exactly right." Apparently he heard me and just laughed and walked out.

Well I didn't ruin the carpet because I'm not 5 years old but I did let the paint dry while watching My Name is Earl.

After the paint was dry I took the insert from the document frame and with a pencil, traced the insert onto the dried green poster board to insure the poster board would be the correct size to fit into the frame. Then I cut it out.

I took some photos the other night at the Arena that Sean really liked and printed them on my computer for free. (unless you count the cost of ink and paper blah blah blah) Then I taped the photo into the center of the poster board and hung them on the wall.

I used a pencil and measuring tape and some very hard Math to make sure they were all evenly aligned on the walls. This took me about 2 hours in all. The paint dried pretty fast. Sean left for the gym when I started and then I finished before he got home. He didn't notice them. When I finally pointed them out he was impressed.
Total Price: $20 (not included paint and photos because I already had that stuff)

So that's what I did last night! What did you do??

Wordy Wednesday

So I got this e-mail today and the title was "Little gator in East Texas" ....OK that's not little. Now, I'm from Southwest Arkansas, not far from East Texas... I've seen a few alligators, we have one that lives at the golf course next to my house and suns on the 18th green. I've even seen one while driving that stretched across my lane from white line to yellow line. Every time I've seen one I get super scared.

If I ever saw anything like the gator pictured below, which looks like it's been around since the dawn of the Dinosaurs, I would never get close enough to it to kill it. I would like to think I would run screaming in the other direction but I'd probably panic and roll up into a fetal position and pray...

Anyway my questions is..
What would you do if you saw this while fishing (still alive)??

Want more wordless Wednesday Posts??