Horse Photography. Tips for getting the best photos.

Enfys

Enfys

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Do you ever wonder how the professionals do it? (The Gabrielle Boiselles and the Sweets of the horseworld etc)
Are their shots carefully staged or just lucky? Those beach shots you see, do they really let horses loose or are they penned in?
What are your tips for getting the very best shots?
What do you use to get their attention? Do you have someone standing out of shot opening an umbrella, or shaking a bucket of food? What is the very best photo you have taken?
Just wondering what people do, that's all.
 
To get the best shots you need a proper camera with a very fast shutter speed. You need to use rolls and rolls of film and out of 5 rolls you may get 1 photo which is perfect!

I had a professional horse photographer on my yard and she travels all over the world to photograph horses - she's coming to take some of mine in exchange for a little help I gave her.
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That will be interesting Tia, will we get to see the end results in time?

How are Legacy and Breeze by the way? Not hinting really!
 
They are lovely.
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I see Isabella has shot away in size!
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She is looking beautiful. Are you still selling her? Will you breed her dam again?
 
Photos in PG.
I am definitely keeping her until Spring, need to get her registered first before I sell. There has been interest in her from arab people because of Lola's breeding, and her colour.....palomino half breds are being snapped up for breeding programmes.......conformation permitting etc.
 
Sounds good! Best of luck.
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Just on a slight tangent here.....try getting video footage of a yearling!!
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I spent 3 hours....yep you heard right! 3 hours trying to get good video footage of a yearling here at the weekend. Only needed walk, trot and canter....sounds simple eh?
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Digital cameras are brilliant because you can take hundreds of shots to get that '1', also if you want to take a standing or head shot hold a little mirror in front of the horse and they tend to look towards it with their ears pricked.
 
as said taking lots of shots! good shutter speeds in addition to taking close consideration to light conditions are essential to the eventual outcome.

How to distract the horse depends. Personally I don't like head on shots so their attention will need to often be diverted away from you so you often need assistance or someone or something distracting.

of the hundred odd I took at burghley I have one i really like although far from perfect and a few 'ok' ones.

Horses are unperdictable which makes it 100 times harder but always more rewarding when you get a good shot.
 
some angles are unflattering, such as the shot looking up toward the horse rather than on the same level, especially head shots. like the tip about the mirror, G.George. We saw a photographer at the World Show (AQHA), where they do like a photo or two (!), and the photographer there had a (used)stable broom with some peppermint sprinkled on it, which an assistant held under the horse's nose then withdrew it out of the frame, making the horse stretch a little with ears pricked. Very pretty shots.
 
I was the official photographer at a show on Sunday. I used a professional digital camera which does make things easy but for this I put it on P mode which basically does everything for you, you just have to set the ISO and it adjusts the aperture so you get the optimum shutter speed and depth of field under the given light. To get the horses attention I just chucked some grass in the air (and mostly over me!) and when they are moving it is far easier to make them look smart when they are trotting, get them when the foreleg nearest you is forward.
 
A fast shutter speed is a must. I think the biggest downfall for most people is the background. It is vital to have a nice, uncluttered background - unless you are really good with some digital editing software!!!

I managed to take a photo with my hubby and my dog in the background, one appeared to be balancing on the top of a fencing post and the other on another one!!
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My favourite book is "High on Horses" by Nicole Emanuel.

There's a particularly famous shot of hers in that book, and she wrote next to it that she used two rolls of film to get just the one photo!! I recommend getting the book if you are remotely interested in horse photography, either for pure inspiration, or some ideas on how to capture those amazing shots.

The image i'm talking about is this one:
http://nicoleemanuel.com/gallery/NeckArch.jpg
 
At a show a couple of weeks ago, I asked a professional photographer to take a photo of my mare with me standing next to her. He went with a noise approach to get her 'attentive' - rattling tins etc. Flora wasn't interested in that so continued with the floppy ears look. "Is it deaf"? he asked in an exasperated tone. I wasn't amuzed as I'm ridiculously easily offended on behalf of my horse
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Maybe I should carry a little mirror around for such ocassions (how little can it be?)
 
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