Its all gone to the Horses!

Messiah Khan · 6 May 2008 at 23:43

Yesterday I did some work for an even photographer who specialises in equine events. Ive not really done anything like this before, but it turned out to be a good day and a good experience. Took over 1100 shoots, but here are some of my favourites (I have other favourite ones of kids, but not posting them for obvious reasons);

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Darryn · 6 May 2008 at 23:51

Never done anything like this myself, but i think it could be a very enjoyable line of work. IMO youve got a real cracker with number 4... 6 is also a very nice image, capturing the horsey mid-stride.

Not totally dissimilar to the motorsport technique for crops/positioning, leaving the Horsey room to run into, but shooting at nice high shutter speeds to avoid unwanted blurring and instead rely on the narrow DOF at low f-stops to pickout the beastie from the background.

Great stuff, another line of photography youve seemingly mastered very quickly.

alexisonfire · 6 May 2008 at 23:58

Although i appreciate the technical side of these, they do nothing for me as i have no interest in the subject, but they are good.

One small thing though is they all look a little washed out in the backgrounds, maybe a bit more contrast?

33L · 7 May 2008 at 08:30

i thought they were quite nicely saturated and really cant fault them. However in these kind of shots im not sure what im a looking for.

Skullfish1 · 7 May 2008 at 09:16

#3 strikes me as a particularly difficult shot to expose for, and considering the detail in the blacks, well done!

Hodders · 7 May 2008 at 09:21

I like the shots, but feel a tad sorry for the horse in #3 !

I little motion blur might have added some sense of movement, but all of this is just my opinion and shouldn't detract from some good shots.

Schizo · 7 May 2008 at 09:24

good photo's for a throw away camera m8.

Sic · 7 May 2008 at 09:45

6 is just awesome - considering the lack of motion blur, you've captured the movement wonderfully. Love the way the horse is standing in 3, but someone's given the poor thing emo hair!

Messiah Khan · 8 May 2008 at 13:30

Thanks guys.

Although generally pleased with the shots, I wasn't 100% happy with all of them. I had positioned myself in a place where I was going to see the action at a distance right for my 300mm f2.8, with a clear background and the light generall behind me. However I hadn't accounted for how much the sun was going to move round throughout the event. As there were riders coming along all day I couldn't really move and look for new locations, so some of the later shots lacked contrast due to shooting into the light somewhat. I could also have done with a 70-200 as groupshots are hard to do with a 300mm prime, lol.

alexisonfire said:
Although i appreciate the technical side of these, they do nothing for me as i have no interest in the subject, but they are good.

One small thing though is they all look a little washed out in the backgrounds, maybe a bit more contrast?

I see what you mean, but I think increased contrast in the background would reduce the 'seperation' between the subject and the background. Ideally I could have done with a cleaner background, or the background trees further away and opened the aperture a tiny bit.

schizo220168 said:
good photo's for a throw away camera m8.

I sense sarcasm.