Extra! Extra!

As in, movie extra.  I was at Day Two of the Turkey Creek Regulators shooting today, and one of the guys was nice enough to pose for me in my attempt to think I would want to paint people someday.  I asked him to pretend he was checking his gun. Clearly how someone actually checks their gun and what I thought how they check their gun are two different things.  I was picturing more squinting and skullduggery type looking stuff, when all they do is look down at the gun.  Hm. Well, that idea burst like a balloon getting shot.  He did tell me that he and a bunch of other guys hauled their horses to Utah to be extras in the cavalry shots in the movie The Lone Ranger. I forgot to ask if he got to meet Johnny Depp, I’m pretty sure they just filmed a bunch of guys in costume barreling around on horseback for awhile.  These guys have saddles that are actual replications of cavalry saddles, and one guy this weekend was dressed like a cavalry guy.  It is really interesting to meet people who do cooler stuff than what I do.  I just run into people who regale their fascinating stories to me. Wow. Well, at least they’ll talk to me…

 

A shooting shoot

The Turkey Creek Regulators held a shooting competition today at Cross Sabers by West Point.  I obviously had to go so I could get pictures of people barreling around on horseback.  It was windy, windy! The balloons were whipping around and I have no idea how anybody hit any of the balloons, I miss a lot of the shooting when I take pictures because I see everything through the camera, and I don’t pay attention to what is actually going on.  I might want to mention here that the Regulators are a mounted shooting club in Nebraska that belong to the national group Cowboy Mounted Shooters Association.  The CMAS has clubs all over the United States.  I am only familiar with the Regulators mainly because they are nearby, although I did get some pictures of the Iowa club in April.  There are balloons on sticks the riders have to shoot out, they’re set out in different patterns, and the whole thing is timed. If you miss a balloon they add 5 seconds, and if you knock over a barrel there’s penalty, too.  They have different levels, so if you have a very slow horse like I do that is scared to death of his shadow, let alone a balloon boinking around in the wind, you aren’t running against some of these guys that go tearing around like maniacs (I LOVE those riders! They have the best hoofies-off-the-ground photos).  Anyway, today it was windy and sometimes it was very cloudy.  I had really lousy dark pictures but very lucky for me I have photoshop, and I can fix any crappy pictures I take.  The ‘sun was out’ pictures turned out really well, although depending on the shirt color, it’s hard to adjust and not blend a light shirt right out into the sky, and stuff like that. Well, I’m hardly a photographer or a photoshop expert, and that I get pictures that look like someone shooting at something, or just charging around at a dead run, I am happy.  I had my 100-300 zoom lens so when they rode close, I got some good portrait-type pictures. I am not sure what I’ll do with them yet, I am taking a portrait class next month from a western artist (how fortuitous) so I will see.  By and large it was a productive day, my eyeballs are burning from all the dirt and wind irritation, and I’m sure if there aren’t tornadoes running rampant tomorrow, I’ll go back again.

 

Turkey Creek Regulators

There’s a group called the CMSA, which is the uh, cowboy? Mounted Shooters Association. It’s a national organization, and there are clubs all over the country that belong.  One club is in Nebraska, and they are the Turkey Creek Regulators.  I am not sure if there is a Turkey Creek somewhere, or they put bird names and bodies of water in hats and drew this particular name (beating out Eagle Lake and Pigeon Ocean) at any rate, it’s a super cool name. Also super cool are the people who belong to the club.  What they do is, they get together and shoot out balloons from the backs of their horses.  Some trot around and try to get a good shot (beginners and people like me who couldn’t hit the inside of a barn) and some go tearing around blasting away like crazy persons.  I saw them at the Nebraska Horse Fair in Lincoln, where they spent the good chunk of two days terrorizing balloons.  The first morning I walked to the arena where a few of the Regulators were warming up their mounts.  I noticed they had pom-poms bouncing around the horses’ heads, kind of in the eye area.  I thought this was odd, since I am sure it would be annoying. I asked Dave, a very nice guy who is extremely helpful and a great Regulator (he got third on a borrowed horse) and he told me the pom-poms were horsey ear plugs. That is so the horse isn’t as annoyed with the gunfire as it would be were there no ear plugs.  Dave was riding this big gorgeous appaloosa he’d borrowed from his veterinarian.  I asked him to do a sliding stop for me, and he did, and it was great but after I took over a thousand pictures of Regulators shooting up the arena, the sliding stop picture is pretty lame.  The members dress up in really cool hats and clothes.  One lady had a black and white paint, and cool black and white chaps.  She was all matching.  There was a guy on a mule, and another guy that looked like Festus.  Well, at least his hat looked like a Festus hat.  One guy rode a big red overo paint, and I got a lot of good pictures of him barreling around.  The last day was awesome, because they had the rifle contest, where they shot out balloons with the pistols and then they’d pull out a rifle and go barreling down the arena shooting balloons with no hands on the reins.  I have pictures of these guys running toward me shooting off to the side… COOL COOL COOL!!  I found the TCR web page, and found a schedule for this summer. They will be in West Point in a couple months, and I’m looking forward to stalking.. ah er I mean showing up to get more pictures.  There’s white balloons they have to shoot first, then they switch guns and shoot out the red balloons on a return run.  There’s different patterns, and you can pretty much do your own thing but you can break the pattern by doing something wrong, which I didn’t quite catch exactly what that might be other than the very last barrel before the home run, you have to go around that.  I’ll learn more this summer. In the meantime, I had about 30 pictures developed, which will give me something to paint until I see them again in West Point.  Yay!