I often wonder how much better and easier my shoots would be if I had the benefit of a regular 2nd person.  Clearly that person would have to be fabulous, that's a given.  The benefits are clear cut.  On raceday and on farm shoots for example if the person you have with you can actually shoot you can cover the event in question from 2 completely different angles and using 2 different focal lengths.   Trainers are busy and impatient people.  They are prone to begin tapping their watch impatiently in about 90 seconds.  In shoots such as these, which is what I was doing this morning, having someone fabulous who will move a light stand about (or stop it from sailing wildly into the air on a windy day!), or holding a reflector up, and/or playing the role of "The Lovely....." (aka my fabulous person on props), it would be a godsend too.  I know it would make the images wildly better too, particularly if the person instinctively knew where and how ...

Maybe I should stop watching Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in "You've Got Mail" , and stop watching romantic films altogether....    I'm not sure they do me much good! "A snap to find the one single person in the world who fills your heart with joy"   "Dream, when you're feeling blue.   Dream, that's the thing to do....  Just...  watch the smoke rings rise in the air...  You'll find your share...  of memories there, so....  Dream, when the day is through..   Dream, and they might come true...  Things are never as bad as they seem, so, dream, dream, dream....."  My day has been filled with horses today before picking the kids up from school.  That's not such a bad day.  I rode Archie this morning, and I hopped on Lyn's other horse Boz as well.  He's a little bit more established than Archie is, and it made me long for Freelance just a little bit.  Archie is coming along beautifully, but he's no...

At approximately 9.58pm this evening (because who really thinks about the G1 race being run at 10pm???) I remembered the Group 1 Moir Stakes was about to be run at Moonee Valley.  I'd wrestled with how I could possibly get there to cover the race, but had eventually decided it was too difficult.  So it was with the slightest hint of relief that I saw it was raining quite hard in Melbourne just before the field jumped, which didn't make me feel so bad about missing the race.  As the field swung for home though, and my eyes followed that pretty dark brown mare on the outside of the field round the leader Buffering (poor old dear) up and run away from the field, I felt a pang of regret.  The mare is called Samaready.  She's by "My Boy" More Than Ready, and is owned by my friends at Vinery Stud. I first saw her race, and win, on one of the Blue Diamond Stakes lead up races.  I liked her immediately.  There are things about her that can make me wince f...