Yesterday, Sunday, Sept 9th, marked the season finale of the “2018 Cowgirl Couture Summer Series” that is held each year at the horse arena at the Genesee County Fairgrounds. The series is run by Amie Schneider and staff.
The summer series consists of three, 2-day back-to-back shows in the months of June, July, and August. Capped off with a larger 3-day back-to-back-to-back show in September – known as the “classic.”
I have been the photographer for this series for the past two years now, and I have had a chance to meet some really great people there! Quite a few of the competitors I actually know from other shows, but there are also more than quite a few that I know only from the summer series.
It’s not the easiest to make new friends there – because everyone is busy! Plus, I’m not a – rush up to someone and say ‘Hi’ and introduce myself – type of person anyway. But over time, over multiple shows, things develop.
Shooting the series, and the classic in particular, is a lot of work for me. I shoot a lot of photos there during the season. This 2018 season I shot
49468 photos! But the shooting of the photos part, is only probably about 50% of the time spent! There is a lot of late nights / early mornings getting the photos ready to be uploaded. A lot of it is automated, but still needs to be looked in on from time to time. Anyway, I digress…
Pulling out of the fairgrounds Sunday afternoon, after the last day of the classic, and watching all of the horse trailers pulling out and each going their separate ways as well, felt bittersweet to me, because it’s all over now until next year – and a lot of these people I won’t see again until then.
