Saturday, July 5, 2014

Photographing Horses: Join Me!

Almost daily I receive emails asking me questions about photographing horses from what camera and lenses I use to create my images to more involved questions such as how a certain image may have been created, how my action images look sharp (or how I got that great blur!) or why my head shots and backgrounds look a certain way. There are no real secrets, the big one I have found is that it takes a lot of time, patience, practice and perseverance to create images that reflect the image you may have in your head. There are really no shortcuts!

In equine photography the first advantage you have is a love and understanding for horses, this will be a huge help for developing your photography skills as you already understand horse behavior, breed standards and being able to predict the movement and expression of horses.
Many people these days have cameras that do all the work for them, and while their images may be acceptable they have little real control over how their images are created, and until you gain some control over your camera you will never create truly good, consistent images.

Since I was originally a film shooter I still work hard to get my images as good as I can in the camera without having to spend loads of time "fixing" them in photoshop. I spend a lot of time composing in camera, and shoot with intention, not at random hoping something turns out good. It's not that simple, and if you are shooting this way you are probably experiencing some frustration at the percentage of images that you are satisfied with!

My popular Basics of Equine Photography Online course starts this coming Monday,
we will be accepting sign ups until Friday. No matter where you are in your skills as an equine photographer I invite you to join me for this intensive five week course to get feedback on your images and learn all the small but critical elements that go into creating photos of horses that you can be proud of, as well as increasing the percentage of images that you are happy with! We will start with the camera and all it's settings in the first week, then progress to headshots, conformation, action and much more.

I hope you will join us. The only requirement is a DSLR camera with a lens that has a focal length of 135mm or greater and a desire to learn! This course will be completely online with the ability to access the materials at your convenience, and I will be providing daily feedback on the forum course area.
Go here for complete details:
http://www.equinephotographers.org/courses/