Photos

This is the game of buzkashi. It is played in several countries of Central Asia and involves two teams of horsemen. Often the teams can be very large but in this case it was just two on each side. It was a holiday and the guys were playing for their own amusement.

I was going to write about the rules of the game but the main feature is that there really aren't any. The white fluffy thing that the guys are fighting over is a sheep's carcass with the head and legs removed. The idea is to use any means possible to tussle and grab the carcass away from your opponents, ride to their end of the field and throw the sheep into a circular "goal" marked on the ground. If you manage to drag your opponent off their horse at the same time, so much the better.

I wasn't sure whether or not to post this because the quality of the image isn't great. It needed a lot of sharpening which resulted in a grainy effect (although I don't think this is unpleasant). I used smart blur for the background to remove noise and to blur the trees which were a little distracting. There's probably more contrast in the image than necessary but the dark area this created to the bottom left is preferable to the noisy brown mush I had before. The result may not be the best possible but it's a significant improvement on the original. If anyone has any better ideas of what I could have done to tidy up the image, I'd be glad to know.


Anyway, this is the type of picture I promise on my intro page. Maybe not the best quality but I hope of interest because of the subject matter. It's not every day you see crazed horsemen fighting over a dead sheep :-)

Jonathan