Horse Portraits

[randallhamster]

Looking for a spot of advice please

I'm quite comfortable with taking photo's of smaller animals e.g dogs etc , i took some portraits of a friends Jack Russell Terrier that she was really pleased with and has now asked me to do th same for her horses.

Just not sure the method to use on such big animals so any help would be appreciated.

I was thinking of my canon 70-200mm f4l lens but also have a 50mm 1.8 that i though may be useful to use.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance

 

[neil_g]

70-200 and a shorter lens (we mostly use a 24-105) are good.

get the owner to locate - a decent head collar or bridle (nothing worse than a tatty/dirty one) and a location with a nice background (nothing worse than the muck heap in the back of shot).

otherwise depends on what sort of thing the owner wants, for posed work a treat is normally good for getting attention. horse treats rattled in a tupperware box is good for getting the ears forward although doesnt always work, ive litterally been jumping around with a 100cm reflector before

 

[randallhamster]

Thanks for your reply
Would you pose the horses or just go withe the flow so to speak

Thanks again
Simon

 

[neil_g]

depends on the horse, if its compliant then a certain amount of posing (or at least standing still) is possible.. we have had 1 horse that just plain refused to cooperate so we just took it to a paddock and set it loose and took some liberty shots, the owner got a real nice acrylic from that in the end