Our local garden centre, Brookfields, has a big day once a year when Santa makes his arrival to garden centre grotto. He arrives on a horse drawn carriage, much to the enjoyment of 100's of local children and adults.
Regular followers of me might remember I got a stranger pic two years ago at this event (stranger 13, Craig, who was dressed as a beer bottle).
Anyway two years on we visited the garden centre as it is a good event to photograph and the garden centr do push the boat out to make it a good event (snow making machines, brass band, staff dressed as elves and pixies)
When all the fuss had subsided I approached the horse handler for a picture.
Initially she was a bit reluctant and suggested I do the carriage driver, but he told her to go for it as he knew she would like it.
So meet Julie, with her two horses Johnnie and Felicity. Julie was really good with the children, encouraging them to stroke her beautiful horses. As you can see by the image, Julie really bonds with her horses as can be seen by her smile.
The horses come from Whiteborough carriages, which is a small family run horse-drawn carriage business based on the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border in Sutton-in-Ashfield. Julie is responsible for all the admin and bookings for the company (and much more I expect)
A link to the company can be seen here
https://www.whiteborough-carriages.co.uk/index.html
I gave Julie a card and asked her to email me if she wanted some copies of the pics. I received an email within an hour of meeting her and ssent her some pictures last night, which Julie liked "I don’t look too bad !!", was Julie's reply.
I didn't know whether to post my mono version of the picture or the colour. I opted for the colour as I have done quite a few mono's recently and in the mono pic it is easy to lose Julie in the mono tones of the horses. Edited in Rawtherapee
Thank you for being stranger number 114 Julie :)
Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page
https://www.flickr.com/groups/100strangers/
My own strangers can be seen here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/57144254@N08/albums/72157657822400168
@beryl thanks for te fave beryl
@maggiemae thanks you maggie :)
@sangwann only one stranger dione :) , thanks for your ongoing support
@dulciknit thanks alison, yes i really like the driver, although I didn't notice him in the viewfinder.
@kerristephens thanks kerri
@granagringa thank you very much for your lovely comment :)
@quietpurplehaze thanks haze, much appreciated :)