I resisted the urge to title this post "Horsin' Around." It would have been so awesomely, obviously cheesy a title, and I yearned to do it. But I resisted.

The reason I wanted to, and the reason this post is instead titled "Airs Above the Ground," is because I saw a performance of Lipizzaner horses this last weekend. The Airs Above the Ground are the part of the performance where the horses demonstrate a variety of "high school" dressage movements that evolved partly from battle techniques.

The horses were beautiful, and it was wonderful to see them. I hadn't been to a performance in nearly thirty years! But they were very, very hard to photograph, and even harder with a distracted four-year-old squirming in one's lap and yanking on the lens barrel.

I tried, though, and here a few shots I thought you might find interesting. I have not edited them one iota, except to make them smaller for posting. Side note: they were photographed using the stunning D700 digital SLR and the kit lens for my D80, an 18-135mm lens with no vibration reduction. (I'm reviewing the D700 at the moment, and I don't want to scoop my own own review, but I will tell you: Wow.)  

Even with the extreme exposure problems posed by a black background and a white horse, and the blur problems caused by my restless preschooler (and the difficulties of shooting with an SLR I hadn't used before), a handful of photos did capture the poised and muscular beauty of these horses. Next time, I will beg, borrow or steal a lens that's a lot faster, for crisper capture of these horses in motion.