“Soul of a Champion” is an image of trial and error, and hard effort paying off. Originally this was for a client of mine who owned Saddlebreds. I had never photographed this horse breed before, and I was so excited for this session! However, when I got there I realized I had forgotten my step stool, and these horses are huge. As someone who is barely 5”4”, a 16-17hh horse is a tall feat for me to be able to photograph at correct angles!
However, the show had to go on! I carefully stood atop some hay bales during the shoot, and I was able to work out the appropriate angles for such tall horses. This subject’s name is Barry, and he is an older show horse who was almost ready for the golden years of retirement. One of his final shows was coming up in just a few days, and this was the perfect opportunity to capture amazing portraits of him. I wanted to create something timeless looking. I wanted to capture an image that would represent his personality–elegant, well-mannered, and proper–as well as showcase his accomplishments. A monotonal headshot was something that came to mind.
There was so much work that went into this image beyond the actual image itself! This was shot on a 70-200 f2.8. I always photograph horses on f2.8 because it helps separate the head from the body, and the 200mm helps avoid any distortion issues that a shorter lens could pose on such a large horse.
There was no lighting used for this, just the end of a barn aisle with natural sunlight coming in! I usually shoot at high noon for my barn aisle sessions as the sun is directly overhead and comes directly into the barn aisle. I always make sure that there is no direct light onto the subject, and that the horse is fully in the shadows, but right at the line where the light and the shadow align. I also almost always shoot on 1/500-1/1000 shutter speed as horses can move quite quickly and I always want to make sure that I am freezing any minute motions!
After the image was captured, I started the editing process. This image took roughly 20 hours over the course of a couple weeks to edit. I should note that the client received a standard edit on this, but when I knew that I wanted to enter it into IPC I had to put much more effort into refining the final edit. This included changing the color of the halter and the metal pieces, enhancing the horse, his coat and features, and altering the lighting so that it appeared as if a studio lighting setup had been used.
This image was submitted into IPC and achieved the Imaging Excellence status as well as being a GIA nominated image in 2022. It also scored highly at the Maine State PPA Photography competition, helping me achieve Maine Overall and Pet Photographer of the Year in 2022, as well as the AIM image award and Judge’s choice. It also won the Portrait Masters Animal Category, and placed Top 10 Equine for the 2022 AIM Print competition.
This image was a labor of love. After the long hours spent editing, and fine tuning small detail after small detail, it was well worth the effort to create an image that embodies Barry the show horse.
