equine portrait help. (link to image example)

[chloewindle1]

Horse » Mark Beaumont | Equine and Horse Photographer Examples there....

What do I need (equipment wise)? What settings on the camera? I mainly use M and A so I'm pretty used to shooting manual just unsure on settings to get this effect. *I have a nikonD5100, 18-55mm and 70-300mm* Thanks

 

[Designer]

The light seems to be whatever the photographer needed at the time. Sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes ambient.

The settings are what is required for the desired exposure.

I think the two lenses you have will suffice. If it is a close-up portrait of mostly the horse's head, then the short zoom. If the entire horse outside, then probably the long zoom at around 70-100mm or somewhere around there.

Good luck!

 

[Overread19 7]

A few thoughts:

1) Exposures look to be taken with ambient light in most, however a couple look like they might be using flash - but its hard to tell. Flash can certainly be used with horses (indeed many are likely photographed with point and shoots only moments from birth) but like all things with horses each will be different and you want to take everything careful to avoid harm or distress to the horse or yourself and others.

2) There is no magic aperture for these photos, but horses are pretty big animals so chances are you'll want to use smaller apertures (bigger f numbers). This gives you a greater depth of field and thus more of the horse in focus. You can use a distant backdrop combined with the longer focal length lens you have (at its longer focal lengths) to help blur the background.

3) I would hazard that there is a touch of editing in these photos that is helping to get a consistent appearance. A push on the contrast and saturation along with possibly some local adjustments to brightness. It's very hard to tell what editing is applied or isn't but it is nearly always a part of a good photos final result (even in the film days there were editing choices during the processing stage).

4) Horses are big animals so you want to take photos from a good distance away from them and thus use a longer focal length lens to get the closer shots. IF you shoot closer to them with a wider angle lens you'll end up with perspective distortion taking effect which will result in enlarging areas of the subject closer to the lens. You'll get those shots with horses with huge noses compared to smaller bodies in the photo. Sometimes you'll want this - other times you want to get the proportions more correct and thus need to use that 70-300mm and shoot from further away.

 

[chloewindle1]

I've been told by a photographer that he uses a speed-light for his Nikon d5000. Would this work the same? I'm thinking about trying this out with my own horse (who isn't afraid of flash lights) and his stable is quite dark so would I need to bump up ISO?

 

[Overread19 7]

With exposure you've got your aperture, shutter speed and ISO. For something like a horse you want a fast aperture to ensure the motions won't blur the subject. 1/400sec would be a good rough lowball number - you could go slower down to around 1/100sec ish if you're lucky and the horse isn't moving around.

So if you can't add flash light then yes boosting your ISO is very important. Don't fear the ISO as noise can be corrected (and much doesn't even show in prints or resized for most typical uses) - motion blur from a shutter speed that is too slow though; that can't be corrected in editing.


Experiment and see how things go - for a horse if you've only got one light you might find it easier to light outside; let the morning or evening sun light the main body and then maybe use the flash to give a little fill light just to lift the shadows on the horse.