Practicing for Horse Show

JulieLawsonPhotography

B. was practicing for the Vermillion County 4-H Horse and Pony Western and English Shows. I was practicing too as I've never done a shoot with a horse and rider. I like some of the panning shots that I got. My biggest challenge will be which lens to shoot with. I love being able to get tight shots of the rider or horse, but getting full body shots will be difficult. The trainer, Laurie, said that if I get on one of the corners, I should be able to get pretty close. With that in mind, I'll probably shoot with the 18-55mm lens. I hope that is the right decision.


Anyway, this is a sample of what I shot last night. There is more, but I havent edited them yet.

Sam

Julia,

I have a friend who is teaching me to shoot horse events.

This is some of the things I am working on.

I shoot with the Canon system.

I mostly use the 70-200 2.8 lens

Try and keep your shutter speeds up. 400-600

Watch out trying to shoot to tight on moving subjects.

I use center focus point only.

Be careful about composition. If you focus on the riders head with a center point focus, and don't recompose you will have a lot of space over the rider and chop off the horses feet.

If they are jumping you can pre-focus on the center of the jump and then just recompose.

I also use AI servo.

We shoot a pony club rally last weekend. Here are a few from that event.

Sam

Sam

Noe more

Sam

What kinda camera you got there bud?

Awais Yaqub

Here are some with 50mm 1.8 and 18-55 kit on 400D

Used AI Servo focus it was bright day with sun directly on head. And i went pretty close could be dangerous. Due to in accurate focusing of both lenses i lost many cool photos :cry

Do enjoy

JDrake

I do a lot of equestrian photography. If you are taking pictures like your 3rd one down... try to at least get the horse's head in the shot as well. Usually riders don't want just a pic of them wearing a helmet etc but want to see the horse as well.... the horse is the other half of the "team." You don't want to cut them out of the picture. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see photogs make when they are new to shooting horses/riders.

just my 2c.

crockett

I do some traditional sports shooting and Sam's comments are dead on. The only comment I would make is I have found it easier to just completely give up on putting the focus spot on anything but mid torso (for traditional sports) It takes a lot of practice to break the habit of putting the focus on where the ball or face is but I get a ton more keepers when I keep my focus point right on the belly button. I also don't cutt off near as many feet (basketball).

If I were doing a horse show for the first time, I would do exactly as Sam said and keep my focus spot right on the middle of that horse. I'd also machine gun it as well. As you get better, you can dump the horrible habit of machine gunning it but in the beginning it sure does help to overcome your incredilbe lack of poor timing.

I played sports my entire life and good timing (using a camera) came quickly and easily to me for traditional sports but if I was doing horse jumping (something I'm unfamiliar with) I would be blazing in the beginning. It's bad technique but you can whean yourself from it as you gain timing and experience.

This of course assummes you have a camera with decent fps. If not you'll have to develop good timing fast and the old fashion way.