What should you look out for on a horse shoot?

Monday 28 September 2020, 20:10 by Martin van Rooij | 6,039 views | 6 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Eleven-year-old Jill adores horses and desperately wanted some lovely photos of herself and her pony King. But what is actually involved in a shoot like that?

Horses are nervous animals. But eleven-year-old Jill was quite nervous too, as it turned out. The shoot had been a burning wish of hers, she had been counting down the days.

So it was important to put her at ease a little, which means being positive about what she does well. And being patient, which is quite a challenge for me...

Photography is learning

Photography is still a learning process for me. Once I have imported and assessed the photos, I often see that things could have been better.

That I should have taken more time, checked the settings more often or looked for a few other locations.

When looking at the photos, I soon saw that during the shoot my attention had mainly been focused on Jill. Does she look good, is her hair and clothing sitting right, is her face well lit? That sort of thing.

And the pony? Well, he is in the photos too. But can you show a horse in a flattering way? I thought not, but it turns out that it is definitely possible.

Ears pointing forwards

Horse lovers look at horses in a different way to people like me who know little about them. In a photo, a horse should have its ears pointing forwards, so that you can almost look inside them.

The horse then looks better and is alert. It also tenses its neck muscles, which horse lovers like.

In short, when you photograph a rider with their horse, you need to divide your attention equally between the person and the animal.

Because I do not know (or did not know) what horse lovers look out for, I asked my daughter for help. I asked her to comment on the selection I had made.

Jill and her horse King
She thinks the photo above is beautiful. 'The pony looks lovely. A beautiful, broad neck, ears pointing forwards, a tough-looking head.'

I do not think the photo is fantastic myself, by the way, the background is too sharp and too busy for me. Apparently, my daughter pays attention to different things than I do.

She also likes the photo below because the pony 'looks incredibly handsome and alert.'

What did I learn from the shoot?
A few things:

1. Keep looking and thinking

Focusing, deciding on the composition and directing the scene, none of it is easy. You need to keep thinking about all the aspects to get the best out of a shoot.

2. Divide your attention

When you photograph a rider, male or female, with a horse, divide your attention between both of them. That also means making choices.

If you want the background to be blurred, use a wide (open) aperture. Where do you focus then, on the person or on the animal? If you stop down a lot, you may end up with too much sharpness in the background.

In short, experiment and see what you like best.

Or focus on the animal one time and on the person the next, so that you have the choice.

3. Make sure you have assistance

Horses are easily distracted and restless. You need someone to hold the reins. In this case, that assistance had another function too: making the pony alert, so that he turned his ears forwards.

You can do that by clicking your tongue a few times, but after a while that no longer works very well.

My daughter had a solution. She searched Youtube on her phone for 'neighing horses' and played the video. King, the pony, reacted well to it.

4. Assess the photos together

As a (portrait) photographer, you tend to look mainly at the rider. My tip: bring in a horse lover who can judge whether the horse also looks its best.

And what happens next?
Jill only had photos of King taken with a phone. Now she has a series of lovely high-resolution photos. She is having a few of them printed on (large) photo paper or canvas.

Her mother writes: 'Jill has got the taste for it. She wants to go to the beach again. So, Martin...'

Fine.
I will come along.

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