Buckskin

This is one of two wild stallions that I regularly see along the David Thompson Highway between Rocky Mountain House and Nordegg.  They are more common in the winter and early spring.  In the summer and fall I think they must move away from the highway, and back into the forest.  In winter the south facing ditches get some sun, and there is often exposed grass for them to feed on.

There are hundreds of wild horses in the foothills and mountains of Alberta.  They are said to be descendants of horses that were turned loose from coal mining and lumbering camps.

This past winter has been really mild, with very little snow, so I haven't noticed any horses recently.  In the past several days there has been a bitter cold snap and some fresh snow so perhaps they are coming back to the roadsides again.  

This image is another from the batch of recently processed Ilford HP5.  This large format 4" x 5" sheet film was developed in 510 Pyro Developer for 7:25 minutes at 24C.  I shot this on April 2nd 2023 at about 1:30 in the afternoon.  I used my Ebony 4x5 view camera and a long 400mm lens.  The image is cropped somewhat.  There were two stallions present at this time and I tried to get in as tight as I could on this buckskin.  They are definitely wild and although they tolerated me stopping my truck on the opposite side of the highway and setting up my camera, they never stopped moving and wandered off into the forest before I could shoot any more than just a couple sheets of film.