Originally posted 2014
Last week I posted a blog about Mike's experiment for Holiday Horse photos indoors! That post featured three grey mares, but it got me thinking! How many could Mike fit in one shot, given the relatively small arena and the affect we were looking for? Well, there was only one way to find out. Bring on the chestnut geldings!
As the "handler and creative director", the picture above was one of my proudest moments. It all came about from answering one question. How many horses could we get in one photo? How far would the lights reach? Where was the best angle and height to illuminate each horse? How long would we be able to hold their attention? Would the camera be able to find the right spot to focus in a fairly dark arena? Actually, getting their attention was pretty easy. Having really tall light stands out in the darkened arena (a couple of mercury vapor lights were left on) was freaky enough to get that done make them all look!
There is no photo-shop editing done as far as the horses AT ALL! Just me cropped out of the photo. All five chestnut geldings "stood and gave their ears" for this shot! That's not to say that there wasn't a big of wrangling to be done!. These five geldings are all comedians!
One of the moments as Mike was adjusting lights and exposure with JB, Jake and Angelo! Jake was able to "hold focus" through almost anything these two did to him! As we added additional horses we had to rearrange the order to make sure a bit of light hit on each one.
But of course, at some point, as a handler, you just have to say, "enough with the shenanigans!" In the shot above, I'm working on keeping them focused. Fortunately they all get along really well and turn out together for play time, but I had to insist that play time never happens when they're wearing gear! Just off camera, there's someone ready to had me gelding number 5.
Anybody care to try to guess who is who in these photos? There's a son of Padron Psyche, Monogramm, Giovanni, MHR Nobility and Jake Jamaal! Calling them by their "every day names" that mean JB, Jack, Angelo, Jester and Jake.