Photography with a Purpose – Sharing the Images of Adventure and Nature to Protect our Planet

Inspiration to explore, connect and protect

Stone Horse Expeditions & Travel offers Riding Adventures in Mongolia. Our trips inspire – to explore, to connect and to protect.  Traveling on horseback is a great way to experience a landscape and explore with ease.  Horseback travel connects you to the land and all its natural surroundings, to your horse, your fellow travelers and last but not least, yourself.

Our long years of horseback expeditions in Mongolia, deep into the wilderness as well as in ancient cultural landscapes managed for human life in harmony with nature, have given us countless images and memories that inspire us to continue what we have done throughout our careers – to help protect the planet we all live on, the resources we depend on and the beauty of the natural world we thrive in. With our horseback photographs of Mongolia we like to contribute to documenting the natural beauty and the threats to the environment.

Sharing Images and Information about Riding Expeditions and Landscapes in Mongolia

Pinterest offers a great platform for horseback photographs of Mongolia. The Stone Horse Expedition & Travel “pinning” boards share information and inspiration about all aspects of horse riding expeditions, wilderness travel and of course, Mongolia. These include boards on scenic landscapes and on wildflowers depicted in close-up photography, on the saddles we make for our expeditions and for trail riders as well as traditional herders in Mongolia wanting a more comfortable saddle for themselves and their trusted horses on long days they spend out in the open steppe herding their livestock.

Sharing images of wilderness, landscapes, wildlife and on how local communities manage resources to maintain their livelihood has always been part of our work and travel, from the Himalayas to New Zealand, Antarctica to North America, from the deserts of Oman to Mongolia’s Gobi desert and Khentie Wilderness.

An image speaks a thousand words. That’s a common notion worldwide, but in Mongolia it is being truly embraced. A visual image is really given importance over words, people want to see with their own eyes.

Horseback Photographs of Mongolia – National Parks and Special Protected Areas of Mongolia

Our images of the Khan Khentii wilderness of Mongolia where we ride, of its beauty, water ways, forests and wildflower meadows, are just snapshots of the true grandeur and only seconds of the great change of seasons that paints the area in lush greens, warm autumn hues and then in the blues and white of cold and ice under a brilliant winter sun.

The images depict not just the beauty but also the features of an area crucial for the country, the lifeline for Mongolia’s Capital city Ulaanbaatar that depends on the watershed of the Tuul River for its water supplies. In this time of climate change, with drought, dry winds and increasing temperatures, exacerbated by the demands for water by an ever expanding extractive industry, the preservation of watersheds is even more important. At our staging area, the Darkhid Valley, we are actively supporting the local community in protecting their resources, in their roles and rights in planning for watershed protection, and in restoring local creeks. A community information center and an educational trail are under development right now and due to be opened this summer.  Open to schools and organizations from the city, and a bit of an added benefit to guests opting for the ger stay, the Train to Ger trip, and for our guests who may stay a night before or after a horse riding tour with Stone Horse.  If you feel like shooting more photos, here is another opportunity.

Horseback Photographs of Mongolia – and Our Photography History

Being photographers ourselves, we like to stop and take breaks for photography, for rest and for small explorations along the route.  You can view some of our images on our website, our facebook site and on Pinterest.

Today’s digital compact cameras certainly help with generating good quality images and video on expeditions. We remember well the times when we were back packing SLRs, lenses, heavy tripods and kilos of film. Photography back then, especially when you hiked and packed your gear into remote wilderness, taught you to take time to frame and bracket your shot, ever mindful of the cost to develop each slide.  And mostly, we look back at the images we produced and how they helped raise awareness, educate and protect.

In the South of New Zealand, we spent 18 months to document Waitutu Forest, one of the last untouched primeval forest landscapes remaining there, a fantastic sequence of ecosystems rising from the cliffs of the Southern Ocean to alpine heights with tussock grasses and scenic rock formations.

And further south, way further south, we spent a number years, summers and winters, on Antarctica’s Ross Island accumulating an archive of some 25,000 slides on our travels and explorations.  Some were published and helped to share the beauty and significance of the Antarctic continent as well as the threats to it. Along with our work there, it was a contribution to protect the continent and the Southern Ocean for fifty years, beginning in 1991. Today, an international initiative has worked to establish the largest marine reserve worldwide by placing the Ross Sea under protection. Learn more… about that area in the Antarctic.

Horseback Photographs of Mongolia – Leave only hoof prints – take only photos

So, with this in mind, we invite you to take a ride with us – and leave only foot prints or hoof prints rather, and capture the images you discover.  You can help with your photos by sharing the beauty of natural landscapes and their significance for life on our planet with others.

There are countless great sites with magnificent photography for ecological education and awareness that you can contribute to, or start your own!

Learn more about horse back tours in Mongolia! See the experience of others who rode with us!

See a riding season’s highlights, riders and horses, and wildflowers of Mongolia!