One of the benefits of participating in a local photo club is the opportunity to travel with a group of friends to shoot.  These “Field Trips” are open to all club members and it is an chance for less experienced shooters to shoot with more advances shooters and get some tips.

Our field trip was to photograph a polo match at Will Rogers Historic State Park in the Pacific Palisades which is a section of Los Angeles.

The Park is where Will Rogers, the American humorist,  built his ranch and where he lived with his wife and children.  The Park includes a 31-room ranch house, a stable, corrals, riding ring, roping arena, golf course, polo field—and riding and hiking trails that give visitors spectacular views of the ranch and the surrounding countryside.  Since the Park is on the tip of the Santa Monica Mountains, the trails offer vistas of both the sea and the mountains.

The polo fields are easily accessible from the parking lot and places to photograph were plentiful.

A note about the photographs below.  We were shooting mid-day in pretty harsh light.  As such, these images were processed using a technique called “tone-mapping to enhance the image and reduce that washed-out look of photographs taken in harsh light.