The Linlithgow & Stirlingshire Pony Club had another successful event at the SNEC this weekend - this time it was Dressage, with qualifiers for Dengie in Novice and Open.

There were some superb looking horses and ponies taking part. Although dressage photography can be pretty difficult, some of these horse and rider combinations made it easy.

More photos in the event photography gallery.

It still amazes me what photos will sell for stock - as this one did yesterday.  In this case it is quite literally a  ’stock photograph’ in both senses of the word.

I took this photo about 3 years ago at a the West Fife agricultural show.  I’m not quite sure why I did - but it seems it was the perfect shot for somebody’s text book.

We popped along to help out at the dog show at Howe Country Centre as both our border collies are currently in agility training, and Nevis is due to compete in his first serious competitive show next month.

I decided to take some dog agility photos while I was there - it was fantastic to watch!

From a photographic point of view dogagility events are much harder to shoot than showjumping - dogs are so much smaller and faster than horses, but also much less predictable. When you look at showjumping course, it is very easy to predict exactly which line a horse is going to take, there is a pretty well defined spot where a horse will take off, and there is an almost imperciptle point where a horse will almost hang in the air waiting for its photograph to be taken.

Dogs - well, they make their own rules. They might take off right underneath the jump, or they might take off 4 feet before it. They might take the shortest line through the corner of the jump, or they might rely on their speed and take any line which fits. They might be looking towards the next jump, or they might be looking back towards their handler to see what’s happening next. All of which makes the photographer’s job much more difficult - if it wasn’t hard enough already trying to photograph a small, fast-moving object in poor light.

But I’ve been doing this for a while now, and I’m getting a good handle on how to successfully photograph dog agility events. We got some great shots on the day, and I’m looking forward to Nevis’ big competition in April.

My most frequently sold image has just been sold again - yet another European text book.  Every time it sells I am amazed again! I originally took this shot in Belfast when I was working on the photography for a city guide.  This restaurant was one of those reviewed.  When I came to send all my images to my stock photography library I only included it because it was already scanned, so I might as well (this is back in the days when I was still shooting film).  I never believed it would sell as well as it has - a total of 10 times over the last few years.

It always seems to be used in text books, so it’s not my biggest earning image, but it is the one that appears most regularly in my sales statements.

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.

Just had a really interesting shoot with a friend from the village. He’s been taking part in Movember, a campaign to promote awareness of men’s health issues, by growing a moustache for the month of November.

I’m afraid I was too chicken/vain to grow the moustache, so I had to settle for donating some cash and taking some photos of the resulting masterpiece of hirsutery.

We messed about with some master criminal poses, but ended up doing some nicer family shots.

Nice, apart from the moustache that is…