Capturing the beauty of horses

[NBach]

Hey guys, I am a wildlife photographer and recently I've wanted to capture horses in riding schools. Has anyone does this kind of a project? Because I wanna be able to capture the power of horses and at the same time their domesticity and I thought some advice would be handy. I have already joined a riding school to be better acquainted with them

[Dave Humphries]

Hi,

Warm welcome to the CiC forums from me.

Could you do me a favour please?
Could you click Settings (right at the top),
then Edit Profile (on left)
and put your first name in the Real Name field
and where you are (roughly) in the Location field,
then click the Save Changes button below and to right,
this helps everyone give you more personal and relevant answers - thanks in advance.

I don't know what the riding schools are like in your part of the world, but often they are not well lit here - at least, not well lit for good photography.

If you're shooting outdoors, it will be less of an issue.

With horses, as with wildlife, timing the shot is important, particularly if jumping.

Try to shoot against a non distracting background, you'll see some examples where I couldn't in the links below - in some of those, I have tried tricks such as Post Processing applied blur, or cloning, to reduce or remove some of the worst issues.

It may also help if we knew what kit you are shooting with.

Here are a couple of albums I shot back in 2008 with a bridge camera, they're not great and my processing and image quality has improved since then, but they may be helpful for you to review.

Littlewick Show 2008

Moss End Showjumping

Plus a few 2010 ones, shot with a DSLR, which includes a couple of portraits.

All the best, Dave

[Saorsa]

Well, I did shoot show jumping for a while but don't have any shots of that. I've been doing Rodeo and western stuff from time to time. Florida does have a lot of cow hunters. The riding school is good to learn the basics of the sport but when it gets to taking pictures you need to be outside the saddle and considering the timing of the event.

Here are a couple of shots. Notice that the retrieval crew is intent on the bull. In this case the timing of the shot was based on the throw or hard movement of the cowboys throwing arm. To get this shot I framed with my right eye to the viewfinder with my left eye open to catch the beginning of the move, not watch it, just trigger on it.



The barrel racers are in highly dynamic situations rounding a barrel but are already looking beyond the present to the next barrel to round. For these (or fences) you can prefocus on the obstacle and wait for the subject to get there. Again, it's timing and understanding the flow of the event.





If you are shooting at the riding school with low fences, try to get low, to the point of laying on the ground. I found that listening to the rythm of the approach was almost as good as the visual of watching. There is almost always a little stutter step that sets the jump.

[JamesScott86]

Wow, those are gorgeous! Nice work!

[deetheturk]

Great action shots Brian, well captured mate!