[dramatic tango music] ♪ - it's not just about the photograph. it's the outdoor experience. [up-tempo percussive music] ♪ keep in mind everything that you need to know about photography-- f-stop, shutter speed, lens selection. nice photo op. we got beautiful light now. oh, my god. i'm your host, doug gardner, and your wild photo adventure starts now. captioning by captionmax www.captionmax.com you know, the wild horse of the outer banks

dates back nearly 400 years ago to when european explorers first came to these barrier islands. now, the wild horse is a beautiful animal and a joy to photograph, and this week, we're gonna be meeting up with professional wildlife photographer jared lloyd, and he's gonna share with us his techniques for photographing these amazing animals. i'm your host, doug gardner, and thank you for joining me on another edition of wild photo adventures. jared, it's good to see you again, man. i enjoyed shooting with you this past winter. what you got in store for us now? - well, we're gonna be photographing wild horses on the coast of north carolina. we're starting out down in what we call the crystal coast and making our way north up to the outer banks, photographing several different groups along the way. - awesome. awesome. it's sunny right now,

but i think they got reports of some weather coming in. - oh, yeah. we've got a subtropical storm moving in on us this week, and so we're gonna have to work fast and work hard with the light that we've got right now. - well, let's get our gear and get started, make the best of every moment. - absolutely. all right, doug, we're here in the rachel carson estuarine preserve right now along the core banks of north carolina, and if you look out, you can already see out there in that tidal flat 20, maybe even 30 horses that are starting to feed on that spartina out there. the light's starting to drop down in the horizon. we're getting ready to have a fantastic afternoon out here, i think. - cool. - let's do it. - jared, this is gorgeous. - oh, yeah, it doesn't get any better than this, doug. these tidal flats that we're in right now, they're full of spartina, which is just-- pretty much a type of marsh grass,

and since it floods out like this, it's able to support this really lush vegetation. now, we can't really see it right now but they're all piled up in here, as you see, four in front of us and maybe as many as 20 just off to the side, aril on this spartina that's growing through here. - that's their primary food? - that's their primary food source on this island right here. - i think it's real important to, you know, get a low angle of view here on these horses. it really kind of puts them in perspective when you think about, you know, how majestic these animals really are. i try to shoot with a real shallow depth of field on these animals, try to blur my background a little bit. you know, we've got this little spit of shorebirds right here in ont us. we got a possibility for two completely different shots. - oh, yeah. - we can focus on the bird, get the bird in nice and sharp focus and let it be a bird shot with wild horses in the background or we can let the birds be blurred,

focus--still get sharp focus on those horses, let it be a horse shot with accompanyinbirds in the foreground, all cordg to taste, what you're-- you know, what you're looking for. splashing, we got splashing. oh, beautiful. nice, tall sand dune in the background. you know, jared, you know, you just don't think about wild--true wild horses being out here on the outer banks on the east coast. - absolutely, and what's really unique about that, these horses have been here far longer than the horses out west. - really? - yeah. just--this was the point of contact. this is where, you know, european civilization crashed into the north american continent. - yeah, this is really, really nice. you know, they positioned themselves now to where we're shooting directly into the sun. we need to change angles,

and there's a huge group of horses over there. maybe we can set up on them, get on the other side of them, the sunny de of them. - oh, yeahyeah, i mean, these silhouettes are really nice, but having a large group likehat, you have to understand that's gonna bmultiple harems that are all hanging out together, and here we are in the springtime. this is breeding season; this is mating season. - tensions are high. - exactly. you know, springtime is here, and love is in the air, and these stallions are gonna be fighting with each other today, especially when we have them congregated together like this. - that'd be great if we can catch some of that behavior. you know, this is the best time of day to be shooting. we're here in the last hour of light, and it's not gonna do anything but get better and better. - that's right. obviously, you know, we've worked our way in on these horses. see, heads down; they're eating right now. they're comfortable with us being here, and so this is a perfect scenario, because, you know, we can switch positions, you know, experiment with different lighting situations right now, and they're perfectly at ease with us being this close. - one of the other really cool things about this particular scenario, jared, is the--the white ibis.

- yeah. - they're feeding right alongside these beautiful animals, and that just adds to the entire shot by itself. - all right, doug, so we got groups of horses on either side of this body of water right now. stallions appear to be looking at each other. so keep your eyes out. we might get some action here if we're lucky. - all right, we got this guy coming across. is that a possible challenger? - yep. ears are still forward, so he's curious. it is a stallion, though. definitely a stallion. - all right, we got three. we got a third challenger coming in. - all right, doug, me and you just stay close.

oh, look at that look. - coming at us to the right. we're gonna have a showdown. - look at this. look at this. in front of you. in front of you. in front of you. - this is absolutely beautiful.

jared, this has been absolutely fantastic. great afternoon, great subjects, beautiful light, and we actually were able to get a little bit of action shots. you know, a lot of it's just portrait stuff, but we were able to get one fight and a couple horses splashing, running through the water, which is really nice, but you know what? tomorrow's another day, and we got a lot of other locations to hit. - what we got so far, i'm pretty happy about. - yeah, i am too. let's ride.

jared, i really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule this week to share with us this beautiful place of carova. i had no idea this place even existed, much less, you know, the home of these beautiful wild horses. how'd you get started in photographing wild horses? - well, doug, i-- literally, i grew up around these horses out here, you know? i've spent the vast majority of my life, you know, either out here in carova beach around these wild horses or just across the water on the mainland, what we call the inner banks, essentially, and so, you know, from day one, they've been an integral part of my life, and, you know, here i am now making a living as a professional photographer photographing them. - that's awesome. what is it that-- about the wild horse that everybody loves so much? i mean, everybody seems to be drawn by, you know, wild horses. they love pictures of wild horses, especially ones out west. - sure, i mean, i think what it is is the romanticism of the animal. you know, you think about our history as--

as, you know, a country, as a culture. you know, our world as we know it was founded on the back of a horse, you know? and even though horses nowadays don't have the same sort of everyday relevance to our lives like they did, say, back in the 1800s or the 1700s, you know, that romanticism is still an undercurrent that runs strong in our culture. people love horses, simple as that, whether it's, you know, wild horses out in the virginia range of nevada or wild horses galloping, you know, across the sand dunes of carova beach here in north carolina. - now, you also run tours out here, correct? - absolutely. yes, i do. yeah, i do a number of different things. most of the stuff that i do is, of course, you know, photography-related, but i also do environmental education with these horses as well. you know, i--you know, these horses, like i said, are an integral part of my life nowadays.

- yesterday afternoon was fantastic down at the rachel carson estuarine preserve, and that was a completely different scene than what we got here. you know, it was backwater and sand dunes. here we're in a nice marsh, beautiful early morning light. - yeah, a lot of people think that these birds here only feed on what the horses stir up as their walking around grazing and stuff like that, but as you see, that bird's actually pulling parasites off of that horse, and that's why it's a mutualistic symbiotic relationship instead of just the bird benefiting from the horse being out here. - oh, there you go. - there he goes. just like you said. bird jumped right back up on top. - this is when they get a little skittish. we just need that horse's head to come up now. - oh, man. - see what i mean? they get skittish when they get up there like that, and he's gone. - with this horse standing in the marsh like this, you know, when you look through the camera, it looks like a horse with no legs, and when you're trying to compose the shots, you know, a lot of first-time photographers,

the first thing they're gonna do, they're gonna start composing the shot with what they can see of the horse when, in reality, you have to kind of guess where-- even though you can't see the horse's legs and where his hooves actually hit the ground, you have to kind of allow for the legs actually extending down through the grass. if not, it's gonna look like a horse laying on his belly in the grass. he's hopped up and down on the horse a couple times, but i have yet to get the shot of him, 'cause when he stands on his back, the horse has got his head down in the marsh, feeding, and that's not-- that's not the shot we want. - no, no. - we want the horse's head up with the bird's head up. it's a waiting game, you know, at this point. - that's all it is. - sometimes it happens; sometimes it won't happen, but taking time and slowing down and waiting a situation out, that's when you're gonna get those magical moments on film. - oh, yeah. hey, you have to work the subject, you know?

people mess up when they just show up to a scene, they see beautiful light, they see a beautiful subject, they take a couple pictures, they think they've got it, and they walk away. - right. - instead, you know, when you're working with wildlife like this, you know, you just need to give it time. you need to sit it out; you need to wait the horse out. you need to wait whatever it is that you're working out until that magic moment happens to occur and you're there to photograph it. - and a lot of times, it doesn't happen. - no, absolutely. - but you know what? if you move on, you don't even give that magic moment a chance to happen. that's nice. head up, tail swishing. this is a beautiful environmental shot here. i love shooting these horses in the marsh. - yeah, you know, with the-- with the way the prevailing winds are today out of the southwest, typically this time of the year, say, you know, mid- to late spring, we expect to actually find the horses out on the beach. what's going on, you have different-- multiple different species of biting flies

that are hatching out here, and as you can see and as you can see with the cameraman over there, you know, we're constantly batting these things away, and it's the same thing with these horses. they're having to deal with this, and so with a strong southwest wind, typically that will push the horses right out onto the beach in order to escape those biting flies. so, you know, this morning, we started off trying to cruise the beach and look for horses but didn't really see anything. so i figured we'd try the next best option and just go ahead and cut across the island and come back up here into the marsh, which obviously worked out for us. - yeah, it's beautiful. this is beautiful. this has been a wild week, jared, traveling up and down the outer banks, looking for wild horses. what brought 'em here? - well, that's a good question, doug.

there's a lot of theories out there. you know, my whole life, i was always told shipwrecked spanish galleons, you know. it makes a lot of sense. this is the graveyard of the atlantic out here, kind of like the original bermuda triangle, if you will. you know, there's something like 2,000 shipwrecks off of our coast, and, you know, right along the coast of our-- our barrier islands is the gulf stream, which was the major traffic route for--for ships, you know, all throughout the colonial period. however, you know, that is possible but not really all that probable, though. one of the dominant theories that's starting to surface right now is actually that these horses, though they are of spanish origin as far as their breed, actually most likely arrived here from the english instead, and, you know, the spanish shipwrecked galleons, kind of takes a bit of a stretch of the imagination to formulate that idea. however, what we do know about the history of the outer banks, first and foremost, the english attempted to colonize the outer banks starting all the way back in the early 1580s. so, first and foremost, we know that the english attempted to establish a colony here. we know they brought spanish livestock here.

we know that they abandoned the colony and abandoned said such livestock as well, you know what i mean? so it doesn't take a whole lot to start to put together dots there, you know, to connect dots. and nowadays, we have one thing on our side that we never had before, and that's genetics, and so what we know about these horses, the banker horse, what we have out here, and the banker horse, what we have down in shackleford banks, considered to be genetically identical to these horses right here, they share a gene with a breed of horse in puerto rico known as the puerto rican paso fino that's shared in no other population of horses on earth, and so, from a biologist's standpoint, that's potentially your smoking gun right there. so, you know, like i said, it's-- there's a lot of theories out there. who knows? i wasn't there; you weren't there. nobody was actually there to witness this. but, you know, we've got a lot of really good, you know, facts and ideas that kind of build themselves or lend themselves to that theory that most likely they came from the lost colony. - amazing history behind these animals. it really is.

earlier this week, we started down on the south end of the outer banks at the rachel carson estuarine preserve. now, those horses looked a little bit different or seemed a little bit different than what we've seen here. - yes. - is there any difference? - no, there's definitely a difference. these horses, like i said, potentially trace their ancestry back some 400 years, we know they arrived back in the 1940s, actually. the rachel carson estuarine preserve was originally privately owned, those three islands that compose that preserve there, and the gentleman that owned that essentially brought his horses out and let 'em go onto that island, you know? just like he saw horses across the water over on shackleford banks, he figured his horses could do just fine there. well, eventually, the state ended up purchasing the land, creating the estuarine preserve there, and the horses remained. - wow. well, now, you know, this looks like really barren landscape, doesn't look like a whole lot of food value here, but remarkably, these animals look way healthier than some of the domestic horses i see. - first and foremost, you have to think about it this way:

you know, we breed horses to exhibit characteristics that are beneficial to us, what we want out of that horse. this island, on the other hand, is gonna breed characteristics in these horses that is beneficial to that horse right there. you know, if they were not able to adapt, if they were not able to survive, you know, they wouldn't be here. it's simple as that. you have five distinct populations of wild horses on the atlantic coast, and all five of these populations have that same characteristic, that big fat belly. what that is is the salt, you know? there's not really fresh water for these horses. sure, they're-- these horses right here, they're drinking from the rainwater puddles and things like that. they're drinking from the currituck sound. but you have to imagine, though-- think about this wind that's blowing across the island right now. you know, we are being bathed in salt as we talk, and so that means the water that they drink, sure, it's rainwater, but give it a couple of days of sitting there, and it starts to absorb salt from the environment. same thing with all their food out here. you think about it. just like the windshield of your car becomes kind of coated with that sort of film that you have to constantly scrub off out here,

so does their food get coated with this, and so, you know, when humans, we eat way too much salt, what happens? we retain water, and we bloat. and so that's all we're seeing here. you know, horses, they don't retain fat on their bellies. they put the fat on their rumps, you know what i mean? so what we're seeing just a big, bloated belly from all the salt in their diet. - well, this has been absolutely amazing. you know, we've been fighting weather all week, you know, periods of sun, heavy clouds, a subtropical storm sitting right off the coast. it's been a battle. you know, we had great light here earlier. the horses have been kind of working all the way around us. light's getting kind of bad. maybe we'll come back tomorrow and see if we can get some better shots. let's do it.

- oh, look at this. head down, that's the stallion in the back there. he's rounding his girls up, trying to keep 'em away from that other stallion that's over there. - oh, man, jared, this is awesome, man. we got fighting going on. this is too cool. you know, we just come over these dunes, and we saw a group of horses, got over here, and there were two groups of horses, and you know when that happens during breeding season, you got two stallions, one in each group. tensions are high, you're gonna have some fights. - oh, absolutely, and these two stallions, they're gonna go at it all day like this. as long as they're in the line of sight of each other, they're gonna continue to fight. there's a longtime rivalry between these two stallions right here, and stallions, they do maintain territories. there's an overlap in territory, and along those overlaps, that's where we get situations like this. that's where we get--

- look, look, look, they're over here fighting, to your right, to your right. oh, man, look at 'em go. look at 'em kicking, dust flying. oh, man. awesome, awesome. bad light but good behavior. - is what it is. - now, how long are they gonna fight? is this gonna be over shortly or-- - it'll be off and on like this all day. pretty much they'll usually last maybe a minute or two, little bit of scuffles like this. this is a territorial fight. this has got nothing to do with females. you know, if females were involved in this fight, we'd see blood right now. but they just keep coming over to each other. they scuffle; they rear back. you know, they kick around, and then they walk away, and they just go back to their females and start eating again. that's how you know it's a territorial thing. they're just right along the boundaries of each other's homes here, essentially. - they rarely fight to the death? - rarely fight to the death. it does happen, but what-- what it usually is, is that the one stallion will sustain mortal wounds

that it won't survive. like, we have stallions out here with only one eye, for instance. this horse, this stallion over here, for instance, looks like it has a dead eye, most likely from taking a hoof upside the head or maybe even being bitten in that spot. - look, jared, look, look, look. they're fighting again. they're fighting again. oh, man. i'm too close, got to try vertical. all i'm getting is head and neck. - all right, doug. doug, doug, doug, look, look, look, look. they're running across. he's running across.

- look at here what we found, a red fox den, jared. this is awesome, man. it goes to show, you know, you never know what you're gonna see. this is amazing, great afternoon light. - oh, yeah, man, this is-- this is absolutely great, you know. i think what we have here is four fox kits and the mother that's been hanging out, going back and forth, back and forth across the top of this dune ridge right here. you know, i knew about this fox den here. i'd seen it, but i'd never seen any activity by it. you know, we happened to be coming by, and there was mom sitting on top of the-- on top of the dune, so we stopped, and here we are. - incredible. yeah, they've been scampering around. the young ones have been playing and having a good time. everybody's completely relaxed. i mean, they're sitting up there, you know, just having a good time and sleeping. mom's up here on the hill, watching.

- absolutely. - i mean, you couldn't ask for a better photo op. - oh, yeah, and this-- and this is the right way to do it too. you know, we stayed back, and we--slowly but surely, we worked our way in on these foxes here, and like you said, everybody's relaxed. i mean, we have three of the kits just lounging around, right in front of the den here. mom's laying down on top of the sand dune, still keeping an eye, you know, 'cause that's what moms do. but, you know, we're not spooking them. we didn't just walk up here and scare 'em off the den, and because of that, because we took our time, we did it the right way, we're getting some amazing footage right now. - this is-- this is really special. you know, here we are on the last, what, hour, hour and a half of the day, the perfect light, and, you know, i love the-- the habitat. i've personally never seen 'em in this kind of habitat. all the red fox i've ever photographed have been, you know, thick woods, swamp, edges of fields, things like that. but i love this. we got the--the sand dunes and the grass. this is--this is really amazing.

wow, what a great way to end our show. but, again, this week we were battling bad weather and extremely high winds. but we still managed to come away with some good images of wild horses. i hope you enjoyed this week's show and learned a little more about the history of wild horses, their traits, and how to photograph them. i'd like to give jared lloyd a special thanks for taking time to share with us this amazing animal that calls the outer banks of north carolina home. more information about jared lloyd's photography and the show is available online. remember, it's not just about a photograph. it's the outdoor experience. i'm your host, doug gardner, and thank you for joining me on another wild photo adventures. what originally draw-- drawed you here.

- [laughs] i'm doug gardner. and thank you for joining me on another edition of wild photo adventures. [laughs] - whoo! [cell phone playing upbeat dance music] - hello? - 400 years, when the-- [sighs] female announcer: doug gardner's book, the nature of wildlife, and dvds of the wild photo adventures series are available online at: [dramatic tango music] ♪

>> naomi shihab nye was born four years after her father's palestinian family lost their home in jerusalem. she grew up, she said, with a very strong sense of exile. her home is san antonio, texas. she's written or edited 30 books, including two collections of poems from the middle east. >> this is completely a found poem. i didn't make any of these lines up. my son said them all when he was two and three. i copied down thousands of things he said. but i love what william stafford used to say when somebody asked him, "when did you become a poet?" he said, "that's not really the right question. the question is, when did you stop being a poet?" we're all poets when we're little, and some of us just try to keep up the habit. so anyway, this is one boy told me. music lives inside my legs. it's coming out when i talk.

i'm going to send my valentines to people you don't even know. oatmeal cookies make my throat gallop. grown-ups keep their feet on the ground when they swing. i hate that. is it true that all metal was liquid first? i said, "yeah, kind of, molten metal." does that mean if we bought our car earlier they could have served it in a cup? ( laughter ) what if the clock-- this was digital by this time-- said 6:92 instead of 6:30? would you be scared? my tongue is the car wash for the spoon. can noodles swim? my toes are dictionaries. do you need any words? what does minus mean?

i never want to minus you. just think-- no one has ever seen inside this peanut before! it is hard being a person. i do and don't love you-- isn't that happiness? thank you. that's for you, that's for you. yeah, thank you. ( applause ) "rick steves' europe" is made possible

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