It's been awhile...some recent Equine XC

Kyle D

Hey Everyone,

I haven't been posting on here much, been more lurking due to how busy I have been with school and work. Luckily I am still finding time to be out shooting at least once a week.

Here are a couple photo's I'd like to share from a recent XC lesson that I photographed for a client.

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I believe that this was the 3rd time that this rider had tried her hand at XC and the very first time for this horse.

Thanks for looking!

Kyle D

*watches a tumbleweed blow by*

Wow, 39 views and not a single comment or critique.

2whlrcr

Just not crazy about your DOF's. First one the rider is slightly out of focus. I think she should either be in focus with the horse's head, or much softer to draw attention to the horse's head. The others have distracting backgrounds, which could be improved with a shallower DOF and/or longer lens. Exposure, cropping, etc... look fine to me. Maybe a little tighter cropping on the full horse photos.

Kyle D

Thank you very much for the critiques.

I too agree 100% with you about the DOF but I had a specific request from this rider capture the day with a larger DOF. She wanted detail in the backgrounds too so I obliged her. I had a chat with her at the beginning of the day about DOF and tried explaining to her the benefits of a shallower DOF but she was adamant about wanting more detail in the background.

These were shot with a Sigma 70-300 APO at f/8 (as per clients request) on a Nikon D50 at iso 400. Normally I would have shot it at f/5.6 (largest constant aperture across the zoom range) and thus have gotten a little better backgrounds. I wish I could afford a Nikon 80-200 f/2.8 but alas...

Kyle D

Would you consider these to be better?

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These were all shot a week earlier on a really overcast day. In order to get decent enough shutter speeds I really had to push my D50 for all it was worth. These were all shot at iso1600 and f/5.6. Towards the end of the afternoon I was really struggling to keep the shutter speed above 1/500th.

Snowgirl

Personally I like the second set a lot more. The riders are more in focus. the 3rd one of the rider with a shallow DOF blurring the background etc. looks great!

Kyle D

Snowgirl wrote:

Personally I like the second set a lot more. The riders are more in focus. the 3rd one of the rider with a shallow DOF blurring the background etc. looks great!

Thanks I like the shots from the second set too, and all of the shots from the day the second set was shot.

The clients loved both sets. She really loved the way the shots turned out with deeper DOF.

It pained me to shoot it like that but hey if they're paying me then I'll shoot it the way they want it.