Taking Caity’s Portraits while away on holiday
Caity’s Portraits were another one of the shoots I did while I was away on holiday. Whenever I’m in Durban I go visit my sister and her horse over weekends. I love Legend (her horse) but seeing him for a few hours on each visit is more than enough. And watching her ride and school him really gets a bit boring after awhile. So on this day I had managed to get out of watching her ride. And catch up on some much needed sleep. But my nap came to an abrupt halt. I was woken when Caity decided she wanted portraits with her horses too. This sounded like a brilliant idea. Worth skipping a nap for. I absolutely love photographing Caity’s Portraits. She is a complete natural in front of the camera. Still half asleep I stumbled out the front door to see what the light was doing. Well the light was stunning! So off I went down to the stables to get Caity. And to tell her to quickly get changed so we could start the shoot.
A few minutes later Caity comes out in this stunning red dress. We raid her moms pretty garden and start the shoot.
Caity’s Portraits with Irish
I’ve photographed Irish before and usually he is a super easy horse to work with. His ears are normally forward and he’s pretty much game for any crazy stuff we do. When I saw he didn’t look to happy I just presumed the dogs must be distracting him. With a few people gathered around watching I thought it would be best to move down to the lunge arena further down the property where there would hopefully be no dogs and less people.
Here we discovered that if we made a noise with some food in a bucket he would flick his ears forward for a second and then we could get a good picture, but still he didn’t look happy.
We moved further down the property away from the stables and tried to see if he was happier here. He wasn’t. I couldn’t understand this. Then I asked Caity if he had been fed yet. Well he was midway through his dinner when Caity went and fetched him. Now everything made sense. Considering he was pulled away from his food I actually think he behaved darn well on this shoot. I’m sure I would have made a much bigger performance if someone took me away from my food to make me pose for pretty pictures!
We decided to put poor Irish back in his stable and let him get back to his dinner, get one of the other horses out and change Caity’s outfit. Of course Caity decided the other horse should be Long Ago. her favourite, although she won’t say that out loud incase any of the other horses over hear it.
Caity’s Portraits with Long Ago
I can’t say Long Ago was any more impressed about being away from his dinner than Irish was. On our previous shoots Long Ago couldn’t stand still because he was constantly asking Caity for kisses. This time not only was he not asking for kisses, but a few times he just turned his head away when Caity tried to give him a kiss!
He also made it pretty clear that he was hungry by making sure he was grazing 90% of the time instead of posing for Caity’s Portraits.
We took him down to the one paddock and besides stopping in one spot on the way down, we stayed in the paddock and shot as quickly as possible so he could be returned to his stable and his food.
Judging by the dirt all over Caity and on her dress I think we have proof that trying to photograph hungry horses is not the easiest task!
Although they do make for some pretty pictures when you eventually leave them to have a snack!
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