When photographing action, depth of field is not a luxury you can afford. It’s all about shutter speed. A fast shutter freezes the movement, and in this case the 1/640th of a second shutter froze not only the movement of the horses but the water drops as well. That’s exactly what I wanted. Sure, a small lens aperture would have been nice, but I wasn’t willing to raise the ISO to get it. In this context, if the background became slightly soft that was a price I was willing to pay to keep the quality of the image high (i.e. by using a relatively low ISO of 640). As you can see, the day was overcast and the light level was low. Therefore, I couldn’t have both a fast shutter and considerable depth of field if I also wanted minimal digital noise.