Equestrian Photography

Equestrian photography is one of the lesser known, though nonetheless still popular forms of photography. For those of you who do not know what it is, Equestrian Photography is the Photography of Horses, both in their natural surroundings and in competitive situations.

Equestrian Photography can be divided into the following sections:

1.  Competitive Equestrian Photography

While this gives one visions of photographers jostling each other out of the way to get the best shot, I am merely referring to the practice of photographing horse sports!

Horse Sports include the following disciplines:

Racing
Showjumping (known in America as stadium jumping)
Dressage
Showing
Eventing
Equitation
Driving
Vaulting
Western Pleasure
Western Trail
Barrel Racing
Rodeo
Gymkhana
Polo
Polo-cross

There could be others, but these are all the ones that I can think of right now, in mainstream equestrian competition.

What is the Key to Being a Successful Equestrian Photographer?

The key to being a successful Equestrian Photographer, is that you must know your subject, the way portrait and wedding photographers, know theirs.

The way that fashion photographers understand models. That, in a nutshell, means that you should be a horse person. You should understand horses. You need to understand the way a horse moves.

Your success as an equestrian photographer is absolutely dependent on being able to capture a horse in their most classically correct positions, and make all the riders look like top athletes.

Let us take Dressage as an example. Dressage is a highly specialized form of horse sport. Each movement requires the utmost precision by the rider, and years of training for the horse and rider to get it right. 

I was once in a line-up of three photographers at a Dressage show. Two of us, knew each other from the local equestrian circuit, and were enjoying the spectacle, animatedly chatting away about the new faces, new horses, and how the competitors and our regular clients were doing. The third one in our group was new. We did everything we could to help her, and explain what was going on etc, and while she valiantly snapped away, and tried to follow our advice about how to best capture the horses, at one point she exclaimed, “But this is like watching PAINT DRY!”

She had absolutely NO idea about how best to capture the horses, because she did not understand the sport.

Time and experience will teach you how to take good photographs, but only passion and interest in your subject will make your photographs truly great. Since making money by capturing equestrian competition, is largely dependent on selling your photographs to the competitors (sadly newspapers often have bigger sports in mind), you need to understand the sport, to be able to make your competitors look good.

This means knowing what angle to capture each movement at. It often, in the case of dressage, means memorizing the test being performed, so that you know exactly which move is coming and when, so that you can be prepared for the ‘extended trot’ for example, and be sure to get at least a few great shots of that.

The better you can make your competitors look (in other words the closer they look to that image of perfection seen in the very top riders) the more likely they are to buy your photographs. 

A fellow equestrian photographer and I always joke and talk about our best shots in terms of the size they sold for, in other words, the better the horse and rider combination looks, the larger the print they ordered of it.

I have seen many ‘wannabe’ equestrian photographers. They come and they go. Those without real passion and conviction for their subject, DO NOT LAST. The photographer I mentioned who talked about it being like ‘paint drying’ lasted just–one–day.

However, do not be despondent, if there is one thing that horsey people like nearly as much as horses, it’s talking about horses. If you don’t know what you’re looking for when you start out, ASK.

Meet people, pat their horses, ask about their breeding, their training, and learn as much as you can. People will be very happy to share information with you, and how they want their horses to look, so there is always hope, if this is the avenue of photography that you wish to pursue.

2.  Natural Equestrian Photography

This area of equestrian photography usually arises out of the competitive side. That is, clients who purchase your photographs of their competitions, will sooner or later ask you to come and take photographs of their equines in their natural state at home. While this draws many parallels with competitive photography, in that you need to understand (or at the very least not be afraid of) horses, it is a different ball game.

It is usually best to charge, as you would for a ‘human’ portrait session. Chances are your subject is going to include the rider anyway, whether in their riding gear or not. Usually the natural side of it will include numerous head shots of the horse with or without the owner/rider, and also shots of the horse running free. There are many techniques one could employ to get your subject moving, and getting the best out of them, but this is not the place to go into those lengthy explanations.

Lastly, to be be a good equestrian photographer, you need to have the following personality attributes.

You need to love horses.
You need to love standing, a lot. Like for 8 hours a day. You will be the first to arrive at the show, and the last to leave.
You need to be prepared for all types of weather. You will get rained on more than once, I can assure you.
You need to love fairground food (hot dogs/hamburgers) or be disciplined enough at packing sandwiches.
Horse poop is basically just grass, so when you stand in it do not scream like a girl. It is okay. You should be wearing boots anyway.
You need the bladder control of an elephant! If you want to get all the shots, then you *can’t* go when you want to. Hope for a lull in proceedings and then run like hell.

Smile and make friends with other equestrian photographers, and HELP each other. Chances are you’re the same kind of person, and will actually become life long friends.

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May 24th, 2011 by

Photography Did You Know?

Article by Natasha Kryptonite

Photography is painting with light! It’s been said that photography is the one art in which you don’t need to go to college, practically nothing separates the pro from the amateur other ability a keen eye or the appropriate moment. Give a digital camera to a child and they’ve cracked it, give the very same little one a keyboard and they’ll get back again to you in due time.

Most photographs are created utilizing a camera , which employs a lens to focus the scene’s visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of what the human eye would see. The method of producing images is named photography .The wonderful factor about photography is its outward emphasis (puns and semi-puns are so difficult to prevent) on the world all around us, not the artwork alone. Moving from pastime photography to specialist photography is a massive leap. It’s a jump not just simply because your capability to shell out your mortgage and feed your family will now depend fully on your talent with a camera and your abilities at advertising these skills.

For me photography is about “collecting” experiences and making it possible for myself to be more than a fly on the wall in my subjects’ lives. I really don’t feel photography is dead, I believe photography is an very younger art type. I also search at the heritage of photography and see that numerous of its milestones have been primarily based on the technologies of the time.Photography is going by means of an enjoyable transition period of time as numerous film photographers are beginning to explore the new capabilities manufactured feasible with digital cameras. Conventional elements these as the essential techniques and lens devices have remained the very same, even so other individuals are markedly diverse. Photography is acquired when weather situations, sun angle, and, when applicable, water amounts are ideal to make sure that photographs will be ideal for a range of functions employing standard photogrammetric techniques.

Normal light in photography is vital if you want to get wonderful portraits. Several suppose this indicates the time of day in which she can shoot her portraits is restricted. Photography is employed to preserve reminiscences of preferred instances, to seize specific moments, to inform stories, to send messages, and as a supply of entertainment. Photography is an artwork of particularity, but this doesn’t suggest that photography must be from “outdoors in. If photography has also considerably normal accident, it will hardly carry visual dynamic. But if it has as well considerably photographer intervention and manipulation of the topic, it will paralyze the expression of the subject’s essence.As soon as you have gotten your head around this and began shooting a number of pictures, you may possibly find that photography is really fun and intriguing. At 1st glance it would look that unless you are a total-time adventure athlete, journey photography is something that you will have little opportunity to apply oneself to? Even so, nothing could be further from the truth. When understanding how to shoot action photographs, there are many ways you can get started training and honing your abilities when you are much from the mountains or wild rivers.

Some are in a position to decide on an amazing spot to shoot along with obtaining the “creative eye” to use the all-natural backdrop to get the finest photographs achievable. Pinhole photography is excellent fun and it can be the most really serious variety of photography. There is the independence from vying for the latest and the biggest the business has to provide, and the independence from the delusion that technically ever before more excellent products is required for great photography.Remote photography is utilised to find out a lot more about points like bears’ use of naturally-occurring bear rubs and how they react to baited hair traps. Information from this function will be used to boost sampling approaches and understand bear behavior. Photography is all about assortment, 1st by means of the viewfinder and second when you look at the outcomes. As long as there’s choice involved, there’s place for artwork – if the artist can pull it off. Great photography is all about seeing.Input relating ‘classical’ portraiture to photography is not so straightforward to find. Even though we may not want to consider this kind of photograph, it nonetheless looks that we could find out a whole lot from the kind of discussion given here. Photography is also increasingly asserting itself on the auction block as an critical investment. And its charges in the galleries and at the significant fairs reflect its significant status. Photography is ultimately escaping any dependence on what is in front of a lens, but it comes at the price of its special claim on a viewer’s interest as “evidence” rooted in reality. As gallery content, pictures are now basically no different from paintings concocted completely from an artist’s imagination, except that they lack painting’s manual touch and surface variation.Underwater photography is becoming an thrilling subject of unexplored areas. Other photographers specialize in areas these kinds of as portrait, business and industrial, scientific, news, or fine arts photography. Photography is a client services business. No matter whether you need household portraits, pet portraits, activities coverage or complete wedding packages.

The most compelling component of digital photography is the notion of showing images to men and women wherever they are, as extended as they are in front of a laptop or computer related to the Internet.The mind-boggling bulk of older images are catalogued under the expression “albumen prints” – the most widespread variety of 19 th-century photographic print. Additional headings are assigned describing the standard cardboard mounts to which these photographs are connected – stereographs, cabinet card images, and cartes-de-viste.

Lastly, If you strategy on operating with older pictures, set up handling procedures and adhere to them whenever images are being used. See pictures in a clean, uncluttered region, and take care of them with clean fingers. Most 1860s-90s paper pictures are albumen. Even non-collectors associate horse-and-buggy and Aged West photographs with the soft, sentimental tones that had been created by the albumen method. If only images are stored in a provided region, 30-forty% RH is finest. If images are stored with paper, parchment, or leather materials, it might be necessary to preserve forty-50% RH to steer clear of placing undesired anxiety on non-photographic materials.

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May 23rd, 2011 by