September 16th turned out to be pretty incredible. There's too much to compress into one post, but suffice to say that a lot can happen in 24 hours when the stars align. Between a lightning storm, my car nearly breaking down in the desert again, and several really nice wild horse encounters -- I eventually stumbled upon this group of horses at the end of the day.

Many people might criticize the close proximity of the climax in this encounter, but I believe the context is very important in every situation. There's a philosophical argument to be had (IMO) about distance in situations like these.

In this situation, I had been sitting in a fixed position in the sage brush for over thirty minutes while photographing a group of wild horses that were ~400 feet away. The landscape and light was amazing. The clouds were a spectacular backdrop and I was hoping to frame the horses, landscape and clouds all in one image.

The unexpected highlight came when one particular horse approached.

Perhaps 600+ feet away at first, he seemed disinterested in everything except standing in place and soaking up the sun. Eventually, though, he began walking to catch up to his group that was steadily grazing westward (to my left). A direct path through the open terrain would have kept him a couple hundred feet away from me, but he made a very deliberate detour.

Slowly and slowly he grazed. 200 feet away, 100ft., 50ft and so on. He was calm as could be. There were no jitters, no nervous body language… just grazing and glancing. He passed by uneventfully. I remained seated and watched them all slowly drift away. It was a remarkable moment to have such a gentle and gorgeous creature willingly approach so closely.