Acknowledgments

I would like to take the opportunity to thank a few people. To my friend, Les Carlyon, the great Australian writer, whose writing opened my heart to the romance of the turf. I was of course already in love with horses, but Les' writings made it so more meaningful. Some of his quotes are used on this site, and I thank him for this. To Martin King, who in those early days, was out there photographing horses, and for taking 'that' image of Kingston Town, in the 1980 Annual Turf Monthly, the magazine that was so influential in my life. Martin has also been a good friend, and mentor at times. His advice on workflow, and other technical matters, have been invaluable. I only wish I was as organised as he was though in this respect! To Robert Lindsay, at NPS, whose guidance and support has been invaluable, in particular for being able to arrange for my camera sensors to be cleaned at the last minute and always in a great hurry! To Jann Hott and Julie Mitrovski, John Wallace and Steve Boyd, for arranging the loan of fabulous Nikon lenses in the early days. And to the stud farms, notably Vinery Australia, Arrowfield Stud, and Darley Australia, for entrusting me with their photography needs, and in particular, with their valuable stallions. It has been a privilege to record what I trust will become signature images of these very important horses, and I thank them for that. Also to Coolmore Australia, Waikato Stud (NZ) and Cambridge Stud (NZ) for allowing me to visit their farms. I owe a special debt of thanks to the stallion staff and managers, who have played such an important role in the capturing of the stallion sequences. I thank them for their patience, and in their acceptance that being finicky is worth the effort! To my editors, who have mostly stuck with me through thick and thin, and to the media and racing managers who work at the raceclubs that have made my life much easier over the years. In particular I would like to thank Fred Fox, formerly of MVRC, Chris West, and Andrew Holmes at MRC, who have always made my trips to Moonee Valley and Caulfield so much easier. I am sure I would have missed a lot of planes if they hadn't been so agreeable and helpfu! And finally, to the lovely Colin Bull and Gary Wild, both good friends of mine, who frequently let me leave certain very heavy pieces of equipment with them, and lug it in and out of the tracks on my behalf no matter what the cost to their own backs, so that I only have to flaunt the cabin baggage restrictions on a couple of occasions. Travelling with so many heavy and valuable bags of equipment is often a real trial, with the weight restrictions and number of bags making it very difficult to get all my equipment to and from Melbourne, and so I thank them for this.

And of course finally, to the horses, particularly the stallions ("my boys" I fondly call them) that I photograph. Thank you for your strength, power, speed, courage, personality and presence, and for helping in the creation of truly spectacular imagery. Australian horses are truly amongst the very best in the world!

"The ultimate tease, you see, is this: on the turf in Australia.. the dreams do sometimes come true". Les Carlyon. "Chasing a Dream".

© Bronwen Healy Photography 2009

The Address of this Page is:

http:// www.bronwenhealy.com.au

ABN: 29 017 796 503