Today I headed up to Cheshire to take pictures of my sister, Katherine Begley, competing at Somerford Park. She was competing at Intermediate level and this was her first intermediate since getting her new horse, Gorgeous George IV.

I have been to many events but few that ran as quickly as this one, once the dressage had been completed early it was straight onto the show jumping and then after that straight onto the cross country. It was lucky I had my lunch early before the dressage!

I really struggled with the sun today as it was very harsh and I was not able to get into the positions I would have liked to cope with the harsh sunlight so there were some interesting shadows to deal with (typical Brit, complain when the sun isn’t out, complain when it is!). I have also decided that George is a difficult colour to photograph as I have now taken pictures of him twice and both time found it very hard to edit the photos, something I have never encountered before with other horses.

The dressage went very well despite George sticking his tongue out for a large proportion of the test and she got her best result that she has got with George in the 35s. The show-jumping went well but was a fairly twisty course which isn’t the best for George and this resulted in an unfortunate 8 faults as two fences were knocked down. Over the cross-country George jumped like a star and all the technical combinations were completed without him batting an eyelid which resulted in a clear round.

These good scores resulted in her getting her first placement on George of 5th which they are very pleased with, the full set of photos can be seen on my gallery page for those that are interested.