Learning Curve

Last night I went on a photo shoot for my sister-in-law Tori and her horse Felix. She had asked me if I would be interested a few weeks ago, and I jumped at the chance. First of all, have you seen the beautiful horse photos over at The Pioneer Woman? Sigh. Equine beauty at it's best. I've never had the opportunity to spend time face-to-face with a horse, and here was a perfect chance! Secondly, my sister-in-law is a beauty in her own right. Getting some gorgeous shots of her would be a cinch. And since I've never done a shoot for anyone besides myself, I thought it would be a good learning experience.

So what did I learn? Well, for starters, I leaned that flip flops aren't really appropriate barn attire.

Luckily for me, I wore brown flip flops, so the dirt doesn't really show.

I learned that shooting outdoors around 6pm in July makes for some glorious light.

I learned that shooting inside an arena would be better if I had a flash, perhaps. I had my f-stop as low as it goes, and I still had to shoot at ISO 1600, which made for a lot of noise.

Fortunately, pretty trumps noisy just about any day.

I learned that, when in doubt (and in low light) try for some artsy-fartsy silhouette photos.

See? Don't you feel better already?

I also learned that my sister-in-law is awesome at manhandling giant equine beasts. This is something I knew already, but it was spectacular to see her in action. She was almost like a different person on her horse, and I mean that in a good way. It was so cool to be get a sneak peek into an aspect of her life that is so important to her.

Alternately, I learned that I know next to nothing about horses. I could pick one out of a line-up, but that's about it. She would try and explain to me what she was going to do and what kind of maneuver she wanted to have photographed, and while it sounded simple it really was quite complex. Which is probably how I ended up taking close to 1,200 pictures. The way I was figuring, after I deleted all of the ones that were out of focus or just plain bad, she could sift through the rest to find the ones where the horsey was doing the thing she wanted. I hope I don't disappoint. Since it'll probably take her a few weeks to go through the remaining shots, I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed.

And maybe read up a little on English riding.