hi guys welcome or welcome back thanks so much for joining me today we're in a shed again like
we normally do and we're going to be photographing some horses under studio-like conditions
we've got some interesting pieces of kit set up which i'll talk through when
we go through i'm not showing you what i can see inside my camera today but
we do have full behind the scenes and some images to drop in as well if you haven't already please
do make sure that you press the subscribe button and hit the bell icon because it'll give you a
notification every single time i upload a video i upload every week and sometimes more than that
i feel like it and if i have time okay let's get started with this we'll bring in the first horse
and i will walk through what we're doing halfway through i'll probably switch the lights but
again we'll walk through that so this shoot was in a barn we've already said that so we're in a shed
and the clients were absolutely wonderful to let us film this i want to talk you through everything
that happens good and bad so the way that i set up my indoor studio sessions with horses is to
always have a track running through it so that is basically because horses are prey animals and they
will run before they do anything else if they're worried and if you haven't already you definitely
should be watching the equine photography 101 video which i will link above because that has
a vital behavior things in that you know if you're not used to photographing horses it is dangerous
this is dangerous what we would usually do is have the horse just walk through the set
so in this situation they would be walking from the right hand side of the screen around that post
around the light and out through the front so do you see how he's getting a little bit worried here
let him out the front and he also he can always then walk there's always an exit
which is really important and i personally prefer to always have an exit route visible if you box a
horse in and it gets worried you're looking at a expensive disaster you can see the setup in this
video we have a very very large 165 centimeter reflective umbrella
and that's up on the boom arm to give me a little bit of more central lighting because that's what i
preferred for this we have a additional soft box to the left
best case scenario for this would have been to have that as a rim light around the back but
horses especially these horses are likely to move so what i'm looking at when i'm taking these shots
basically is i try if i possibly can to keep the horse on that background square which is actually
over three meters wide not that you could guess in this situation really it's good to have it
pinned or pressed or taped up against the back of something that was not an option in this location
so three meters was what we had often times the horse will be off the edge of that
this is one of the horses he's called lucky he is a warm blood stallion and it is covering season so
if you know horses you'll know this was already going to be an exciting eventful afternoon and
this horse is wonderful so as you can see um lucky this horse has been handled in our rope photo
halter so this horse loves tic tacs so we had a pot of chewing gum and a pot of tic tacs on hand
to shake for him and he gave us the most wonderful poses and behaviors i'm making sure i'm using my
single point focus on the eye just pretty much the same as we did in the how to shoot horses on a
black background in natural light video we're just kind of doing the same thing so just like in the
previous equine photography videos we're getting a nice curve on the horse usually that works really
nicely so look he's giving us absolutely solid images at this stage like an absolute professional
it is good to when you're working with horses have those legs nice and straight and square underneath
them or in a split which i'll show you in a second so we got these absolutely stunning images of him
and he photographs really nicely under the light i'll show you on the screen how those two lights
come into play there and what each light is doing either on an image of him or on on an image of
of someone else so we keep they keep it quite chilled if the horse wants to move then the horse
can move i'm actually stood outside in the rain at this point everybody else is inside in the dry
so at this point i kind of decided how how to do a confirmation shot so a confirmation shot
is from the side and i'm just explaining that i don't want him stood square i'd like him to
split and the reason why i wanted him to split was because for him and his confirmation his
uh body type and scale it was just going to be the most attractive pose for him and because
he has a naturally very high head carriage we needed to have his head a little bit lower down
side this side urm i would say this side is his better side
you just have your hand, can you just get him to drop his nose.
it doesn't need to be round just about there a little bit out a little bit just to soften that's it
if you don't recognize the two ladies to the right hand side they are jess and jess's mum they've
been on the channel previously but definitely not with horses so there was a slope on the floor and
felt that he would be better going slightly uphill instead of going downhill
and i'm asking can you move a little bit closer to the light what i don't want is for his back end
to be too far away from the camera and look too small so let's try and get him straight on yeah
so he knows what he's doing he's like look at me he's like hi
so the issue with this positioning was that lucky was actually leaning up the hill so he's leaning
too far forwards so what we ended up doing was actually switching the lights around completely
and we ended up the other way round so it's just a case of being patient again rewarding the horse
when they're doing the right thing and in horses case the one of the biggest rewards is to remove
pressure so removing pressure from him was the best thing to do we do not rush these sessions
they are what they are but the work usually is lovely so i am quite particular about getting
things in the right place we did then going ahead and switched the same stallion into a bridle so
he's in a nice bridle here with a nice chain and what we're trying to do is give the horse the head
whilst keeping them stood stationary so we get that nice curve coming through in the neck it's
important that the handler at this stage gives the horse the head that it needs to turn its head
and i do prefer if possible to have a horses outside now i asked if he could back the horse
up two steps because the hill was a little bit too far forward for the light to be catching
them at this stage we're getting good spill forward so let me just pause i will show you
in terms of this situation here the light fall down so the reflective umbrella is coming out
and in this situation the light is falling through now the majority of the lights actually hitting
in front of the horse it's not hitting the horse head-on so it gives us much softer light from what
is already a large modifier and we don't need the horse to be extremely close to it we just need it
to be within the vicinity of it and that'll give us a lovely soft light we now have the main light
key light on the left upper left and we have the you're gonna have to call it a fill light
on the right now the thing about the right is basically that we have got a
big post there and to follow on with the track theory having an escape route keeping that light
in its exact position originally was impossible because it would be out in that track so we ended
up operating in this in this method instead that's a really nice positioning for us
no he's not all on the background but i don't mind they're not going to be in the exact right
place all of the time and that's where my skill comes in to know can i deal with this
afterwards in this case yeah i can deal with this afterwards so i'd rather get the best shot of him
than sacrifice that for getting him all on the background so we got a few side on shots
of this horse and then we moved on over onto another horse that's it guys so i mean it's
all kind of said and done we've done everything that we needed to do today i hope this has been
helpful for you if it has please do let me know and i'll see you all again really really soon