Another Linlithgow & Stirlingshire Pony Club event at the Scottish National Equestrian Centre (SNEC) at Oatridge College.

It was a pretty full-on day – show jumping classes started at 8.30am, and we were still takings photographs for the last one at 9pm, with the snow falling deep and thick and even outside.

But it was a great event – lots of teams in every class, all having a lot of fun. The course-builders were very helpful in giving us good positions to get the best showjumping photos possible.

It was a long hard day but we came out with almost 1500 quality photos to go on the website, and orders are now pouring in so it was well worth it.

Our border collie Nevis had his first competition this weekend at the Kingdom of Fife Fun Dog Agility Show.

It was a fairly gloomy winters day, and the dog show venue at Highfield near Collessie has pretty poor lighting – I was shooting at the maximum usable ISO setting. But that’s why I’ve invested a large sum of money in the equipment that I have – it can produce reliable results no matter what the conditions.

One of the problems of dog agility shows is there is a very high percentage of black and white collies which can look identical in small thumbnail photos – so I’ve learned it is essential to get a shot of the handler too, so that people can tell which dog is which on the website!

Nicole from the Linlithgow & Stirlingshire Pony Club asked me to come down and take some event photos at their annual fun show at the Scottish National Equestrian Centre (SNEC) at Oatridge in West Lothian.

As well as the usual show jumping classes there were lots of fun competitions, including fancy dress, parent & pony, horse & hound and Chase Me Charlie. Conditions for photography were not the best due to the poor lighting in the warm-up arena where most of the jumping was held, but fortunately we have the latest Nikon equipment which performs superbly in low light, so were still able to get very printable shots even at the end of the day.