For this week’s blog, I thought I would tell a story about another photo of mine.  I call this photo “His Majesty.”  It is a picture of a wild mustang running through wild mustard. 

Carol and I sometimes drive out to the West Desert to look for the wild  mustangs and perhaps capture a nice landscape image along the way.  Sometimes we are successful, other times not so much, but we always enjoy the drive and each other’s company. 

In this instance we drove out past the Dugway Proving Grounds; it takes about two and a half hours to get there from home, and started looking for the horses.  We keep a nice set of Nikon binoculars in the truck.  Looking for a herd of horses in the distance is not so easy.  We typically see lots of “rock” horses, “tree” horses and “bush” or “shrub” horses.  We drove some distance on what is part of the historic Old Pony Express Trail toward Simpson Springs.  As we were driving we noticed  in the lower lying areas off the road a field of purple. It was not the only one.   We had never seen that before (and have not seen it since).  We determined it was purple mustard (likely (Chorispora tenella) blooming.  The combination of appropriate moisture and weather sometimes causes interesting blooms.  Think about the so-called Super Bloom in Southern California.  

It was interesting to see, it looked so out of place in the desert, but still no horses. 

We continued our drive and eventually came across a small number of horses in a different field of  purple mustard.  We parked the truck, I grabbed my longest lens, and started walking, looking and waiting for a composition.  There were about five horses.  It was not the main herd, but it was something.  Purple mustard, mountains in the background and wild mustangs of the Onaqui herd. Sometimes they would chase one another in the distance. Fun to watch, but not the best composition.  Eventually the stallion took off in my direction, galloping straight at me.  He eventually slowed, waved his head in my direction and then he was off again. 

I made my photo.  This one won a blue ribbon at our Annual State Fair Photography competition.

There were a couple of other nice images to be made that day. 

We have gone back looking for horses and purple mustard.  Sometimes we find horses. 

Thanks for stopping by.