What we were looking for coming out
here is, we're looking for these colonial
Spanish Mustangs.
They actually swam on
shore from shipwrecks off the coast, and
this was around what time do you think?
So about five hundred years ago. Five
hundred years, and this has been their
home for five hundred years. It has, yeah and
at one point there was something like
five thousand horses roaming the area,
but now they're actually an endangered
species. Here in the US, there's only about
eighty five of these horses left, that's crazy!
So we can come round here, ah they are
beautiful? How do they feel about us
being right here. They don't mind us too
much, and honestly you see different
personalities with different staff. Yeah
this stallion, since he has three mare's
and he has all these scars on his body,
that shows that he's a confident fighter.
Yeah not too worried about the people
around but he's a lover and a fighter!
Yes!
And this this Humvee? Where's this from?
Saudi, this is military surplus so this
one actually is from Desert Storm. So
these are fully customized vehicles
driving out here, and they're not the
most eco-friendly. But one thing our
company does is to offset our CO2
emissions. We plant enough trees each
year to offset that. Nice I like it awesome,
lets go find some horses!
All right!
I love this so pretty.
They're just sleeping huh? Mostly.
I'm swapping out to the 105mm because I want
to get a very shallow depth of field. I
want this portrait of the horse popping
out from the sea, while this mare is
isolated. I just want to get a different
look, and to do that, I want to shoot an
f/14, but it's so crazy bright out here,
that my shutter speed needs to be really
fast. So I'm at 1/8,000th of
a second, which is the way I can
neutralize the exposure, when shooting at
that shallow depth of a field, because
I'm still already at an ISO of 100,
So we need to be fifty feet away at all
times, just to be respectful of the
horses. To that end, I'm shooting with a
70-200 mm, which affords me
the opportunity to get right up on the
horses, without being disrespectful to
the space that they need, and I'm
shooting with two different cameras, with
two different lenses, because I don't
want to have to change my lens, while I'm
out here! And it's sandy, and it's windy,
and I don't want any possible sand
getting in my sensor, and if I have to do
a quick lense change to one of them, I'll
just do that in a more protected area
where I'm kind of block the sun and the sand.
We're looking for hoof prints, like we're
tracking them. Yeah exactly, and fresh
piles of poop are also a good thing.
Oh yeah I was looking for the poo....I'm
like you, very excited about fresh poop.
When we get over this bump, this second bump a
good watering hole up there.
Oh this is so pretty.
So these horses are going through this
marshy area, which makes for some really
beautiful foreground right here.
So shooting with this water and this Marsh
in the foreground, it's just so pretty,
and I'm doing all of this in a single
shot focus mode, because there's so much
distracting elements that I don't want
to get in the shot, and I want my focus
pulled by some of those moving leaves
and trees and such. Bring in some of the
reflection here, so we have this gorgeous
reflection.
So I am loving how that's looking, this
is just about a most incredible shot. Get
him to look up, and smile, be perfect.
That black one's really pretty stallion,
walks in the back watches over the girls.
Oh so two things I can do when I'm
shooting against the sun.
One, I can shoot in a pure silhouette and
purposely make it so that they are not
exposed for but they're popping against the sky
and with that tail and what that means that it's
definitely something I'm gonna be doing.
In addition I can switch to a spot
metering, and shoot in a way that I know
that it's backlit, I don't have a ton of
fill traditionally... but I do have all
this bright white sand coming up, and so
I do get to have some of the bounce from
that. That's helping you get that shot. We
had a great time shooting out here on
this very bright sunny day. We have no
guarantees down here. These are wild
horses, and we have to either find them
or wait for them, but there is no just
walking up to where they're gonna be, and
that was a lot of the fun out here, was
being able to track them down, and get
these shots!