Equine photography - Critique sought

[Space Face]

This was my understanding of bracketing:

Bracketing in Photography: The Ultimate Guide

Bracketing is a helpful technique, but when should you use it and what does it offer? We share everything you need to know.

digital-photography-school.com

 

[Overread]

That article is a little, what I'd consider, brief with the actual details. They also reference a 7D so they are 100% just giving a very short-hand answer. Bracketing, as I've always come across it, is 3 separate shots. Yes they are enabled with one press of the shutter, but they are 3 separate shots. All its doing it automating changing settings for 3 shots and then binding them to one press of the shutter to enable.

As I noted before I've not personally encountered a camera that produces a bracketed shot from a single exposure; I can see how it would be done (at least if all its changing is the ISO), but otherwise shutterspeed and aperture are pretty much fixed at the time of taking the shot so to vary either (or both) you need another shot.

 

[jcdeboever]

Jc - does your camera take all 3 bracketed photos at once? I want to say mine does it 3 consecutive so it wouldn’t work for action but now I’m doubting myself and will need to test that!

Not sure. I've only done this with film (Nikon F2) so it's manual and stacked in post. The subject was always a building or landscape. Im pretty sure the OP's Canon 7D does this automatically if setup that way in the menu. In other words it probably can be set up to fire 3 images and merged into one in camera. I was only suggesting something that may prove to be useful under flat lighting conditions.

 

[Overread]

I honestly can't recall if the 7D can stack them automatically into one photo. It "might" be able too, but it might just be a touch shy of the generation where that became a feature. That said all that does is take the 3 photos and stacking and bind it to a single button. You'd still have the same need for 3 separate shots one after the other. Then all the camera would do is post-process them together for you as opposed to doing it yourself in editing.

 

[SquarePeg]

I honestly can't recall if the 7D can stack them automatically into one photo. It "might" be able too, but it might just be a touch shy of the generation where that became a feature. That said all that does is take the 3 photos and stacking and bind it to a single button. You'd still have the same need for 3 separate shots one after the other. Then all the camera would do is post-process them together for you as opposed to doing it yourself in editing.

You can create your own bracketed exposures in post and merge them. As long as you shoot in the middle and don’t blow out highlights or clip darks all the info is there.

 

[NS: Nikon Shooter]

-

The moment, it's all in the moment.

That moment is in the movement. In my experience, the shot
was taken too late, after the initial push, the full extension, and
take off, already in the contracting/regrouping phase — for the
horse — and the sitting back in the saddle for the rider.

I posted some illustrations here. No bracketing ever considered.

 

[Lez325]

My thanks Les, those do make some big differences to the shot.
You've taken the same crop concept I've used (more before than behind) and pushed it further and I think that certainly works better, it really shows off the motion a bit more and makes it feel like its moving further forward.
Brightness in the shot is also much improved, though I have to say I'm still doggedly fond of the darker tones on the horse in the original, but I wonder if part of that is just my "minds eye" recreating the slightly dull conditions I shot in at the time; or perhaps I'm just a touch too conservative in editing at times, to my own detriment when trying to make a shot.

Editing for me a a vital part of being able to present an image that I can sell - which I presently make my living from- we all have a different perspective when it comes to editing- to be honest getting it right in camera make such a huge difference, to that and I try to achieve that when and where I can

Keep at it

Les

 

[DennisH]

Pardon my comment, I have much more experience in architectural photography than equine photography. But, I would have rather seen the shot from an angle showing the fence in perspective instead of straight at the end. I feel that the post in front of the horse looks too much like a carousel. But that may be just my bias against shooting things straight on.

On the other hand, I think this is a beautiful shot. The focus and exposure looks great on my monitor. Your photo shows the concentration of the rider and the muscular effort of that beautiful horse. It was a pleasure to look at it.

 

[greybeard]

I have looked at your photograph and these are the things I would do to improve it in my humble opinion. Using photoshop I selected the horse and brought up the mid tones a bit to separate it from the background. Then I selected the most distant background and added some Gaussian blur to simulate a shallower DoF. Then, I cropped a little putting the horses eye at the 1/3rd intersection. I also spot sharpened the horses eye and surrounding hardware as well has the hooves and the riders boots. And lastly brought up the overall contrast and healed out some distracting highlights in the background. This is what I would do to improve your picture.

I hope this helps

 

[Don Fischer]

I love that shot! I guess the lighting is pretty good but the composition is super. I've tryed getting shot's like that at a couple cross country shows and to get the animal in that position isn't something I found I could plan! Matter of fact had a few but took a huge number of shots to do it and most were bad shots on any level! Problem is it's an animal not only moving but also jumping. Beautiful!!!!!!

 

[William Baroo]

Bringing out the horse and rider made a great difference, but I would go ahead and crop more to give it balance and get rid of some of the background, which is not ideal in terms of interest.