As most of the people who visit here are probably friends with me on facebook, you’ve probably already seen my -tons- of photos related to horses. A quick count of 17 albums related to them, in fact. In the past I have dabbled with equine portraiture, a couple paid gigs, and a few for friends that were not. There are a couple reasons I do this. One is that horses can be notoriously hard to photograph, and while a good photographer might have great lighting and a beautiful composition, if the horse’s expression is wrong the equestrian will not like it. Getting those ears pricked, a happy or peaceful expression, or the “look of eagles” means a lot to horse owners when looking at photos of their animals. The other reason is that it’s just plain fun!

Just recently I did a portrait session with my best friend, Nikki, and her 26 year old (yes that’s right, older than me!) Quarter Horse gelding, Star. Normally these sessions take about an hour, but I believe we spent about three hours trekking through wet tall grass, chasing Star out of backyards, and generally trying to get Star to play nice before we felt like we had the images we wanted. Here are a few of my favorites from that morning.

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I’m so glad we were able to take these photos. In my humble opinion, and hopefully Nikki’s too, it was worth the work. I know how much I love the photos of Foster (and Tyler) and I from our engagement shoot with Robyn Van Dyke, and it’s nice to be able to do something for such a good friend!

Plans for the near future include hopefully upgrading my well used, but outdated camera to something that can handle more than 3 frames per second and preferably take video. Then who knows, maybe I will explore taking on more freelance portrait sessions! (Shameless plug alert- if you’re interested in a shoot let me know!)

It takes a fast camera to get shots like these!
(from our Rolex 2012 trip)