HORSE
PHOTOGRAPHY
Lynette Smith
LESSON SEVEN
Motion
·
Panning
·
Stop
Action Shots
Final Thoughts
·
Storage
and Organization
·
Helpful
Websites, Links and Forums
·
Tips
MOTION
Panning
“Panning” is a technique that can be
used for shooting action shots when the subject is traveling in a straight
line. The camera moves at the same speed
as the subject.
Instead of freezing the motion for a sharp action shot you actually move
with the camera to track your subject as it passes by you. Your photo will show movement by a blurred
background while the image of the horse remains sharp (if your timing is
accurate).
A relatively slow shutter speed will
accomplish this effect. A shutter speed
of 1/15 second is about right for running horses. But you’ll have to experiment. You may find 1/30 second works better for
you. Try different things.
I find that “panning” a running horse
at 1/15 second blurs the background and some moving parts such as feet, legs,
and tail. Blurry legs and feet can add a
sense of movement and action to the final photo.
What I suggest is that you try
different shutter speeds between 1/8 of a second to 1/60 second. Write down the image number and the details
for each image. This will give you a
guide to what you will get with each shutter speed and the panning technique.
You want to blur the background
enough, but don’t want to lose the sharp image of the subject
When panning, you can work left to
right or right to left, but the technique will not work with images moving
toward you.
A running or cantering horse is a
better subject for panning than a horse moving at a slow speed such as a walk
or amble. You can still pan with that
slow movement, but you won’t often get the same effect.
Panning adds the feel of speed to an image.
To successfully pan, you want to
center the moving object in your viewfinder as early as you can. You pan the camera by swiveling your entire
upper body (not just your head and hands).
While focusing on the image to your
left you will begin your panning motion before you press the shutter release
button and continue panning for a moment after the exposure ends. This technique assures a continuous smooth
motion.
Panning a cantering horse at 1/30 or
lower should produce some stunning shots.
If your camera provides a
continuous focusing mode, I would recommend using it.
When panning, always follow through
and keep your movements as smooth as possible.
You can use a tri-pod for panning, but I find it gets in the way more
often than not—that’s my experience.
It’s important when panning that you
give serious consideration to your background.
You want to make sure there is contrast in the color and tone between
the moving subject and the background.
You will get a more effective image with a background that is “busy”
with lots of details, tones and colors than a plain background. This is one of the exceptions to the “simplify
your background” rule. The “busy”
background will produce streaks from the details offering a unique effect.
Panning is all about getting a
relatively sharp subject in comparison to its background. Some blurring of your
main subject can actually add to the feeling of motion.
When panning with a telephoto lens you
may have unwanted up and down camera movement.
The slightest jerk can ruin your panned image. This is where a tripod can help. Still, I suggest you practice with and
without the tri-pod to determine what works best for you. Some photographers prefer the tri-pod while
others have a steadier hand and would rather not use one for panning.
Here is a great article on panning http://www.ephotozine.com/article/Camera-panning-4768
for reference.
Stop Action Shots
The first and most important step in
making a great photo of a subject in action is to set a fast enough shutter
speed to “freeze” the motion.
With action photography it’s important
to note that if you have a very fast shutter speed you may end up with a static
image that appears to have no moment at all.
Know your goal before you prepare to shoot your photo.
The shutter speed is the length of time the lens
aperture is open and gathering light.
If you try to photograph any moving subject and you don’t have a clear
understanding of shutter speeds you are likely to get disappointing
photographs. Your images will either be
blurred with an unrecognizable subject or the photo will be absent of the
subject because it raced out of the frame.
Getting the stop action photo right
depends on learning the timing of the camera and understanding the movement of
the horse.
You need to anticipate the action, and that can be a
challenge since horses are unpredictable.
If you wait to see the action, you
missed it.
At a recent gaming event I was
watching different horses and riders to get a sense of what was going on. I noticed a horse that was very “hot” and
kept jumping around with his front legs popping up. I knew that horse was going to do something,
so I set my camera up and pointed the lens on the horse/rider. Within less than three minutes the horse
reared. Because I was ready for the
action, I captured the shot.
The more you know about horses, the
more often you are going to be in the “right place at the right time.”
With all the bells and whistles offered by new digital
cameras some might think “I can put it on action and rapid fire and I will get
great shots.” That couldn’t be further
from the truth. I have learned that even
with a camera that can fire off 12 frames a second you can still miss a
shot. It’s better when capture the image
at the precise moment because you anticipated the horse’s actions.
Stopping action is all about timing
and reacting. To freeze motion effectively you must use a fast shutter
speed. The faster a horse is moving, the
faster the shutter speed.
T stop the action of a horse cantering
or galloping you would need a shutter speed of at least 1/500 or 1/1000 second.
When you want to freeze your subject,
you need to take into consideration three factors: (1) the distance between you
and your subject, (2) the direction the subject is moving and (3) the lens
you’re using.
Once you’ve determined how far the
action is (10 feet, 75 feet, etc) you adjust the
shutter speed accordingly. The closer
you are to the action, the faster the shutter speed must be.
Then determine if the action is moving
toward or away from you and what the appropriate lens would be.
You will find that most horse
photographers suggest a minimum shutter speed of 1/500 sec to capture a sharp
image. Using a faster shutter speed,
however, results in a little trade-off in your aperture, ISO or possibly
underexposure. I would prefer to have a
“sharp” image if I want to capture “action” like a bucking horse. If the image is a tad “grainy” from using a
higher ISO, I’m okay with that. It’s a
matter of preference (remember photography is subjective).
You can add a flash to increase the
amount of light, but typically most “on camera” flashes aren’t powerful enough
to make a big difference.
“Flash” light can also reflect off the
eyes of a horse and give them a green “glow” which I don’t think makes a good
photo. The other issue is the flash
“might” distract a horse and rider. So
when shooting horses and trying to get crisp action shots I work without a
flash.
As you gain experience, you’ll start
to see the differences with shutter speeds, apertures, lens focal lengths,
ISO’s and more. The more experience you
gain, the more creative control you’ll have.
For example, if you were photographing
a reining horse a distance of 15 to 25 feet with a wide-angle lens you would
likely choose a shutter speed of at least 1/500 second to freeze the
action. If you were a distance of 50
feet away and using a 200mm telephoto lens, a shutter speed of 1/500 second
would work. However, if the rider were moving parallel to you, then 1/1000 of a
second would be required.
Experiment and practice and don’t be
afraid to try different things…just be sure to write down the results achieved
by each setting combination.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Storage and
Organization
What programs are
available to store your photos and keep them organized?
I wish there was a magic
answer to this question. But with the
constant changing of technology it’s always a challenge to keep up. I’m going to share my personal preferences and
some of what I’ve learned from other photographer friends. We’re only going to
talk about a few of the programs available.
My personal program of
choice for storing and processing photos is Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS4.
Adobe Lightroom is
basically a sorting program with editing features. It is designed to make it easy to sort,
manipulate and store thousands of images. It's very easy to get up to speed
with the program in just a few minutes.
Why do I use Lightroom?
I find it very user-friendly and very to master. Since I’ve started using adobe Lightroom I
get more accomplished then I ever did with Adobe Bridge or iPhoto. My workflow is smoother, quicker and more
effective. My photos are easier to
locate and process and that saves me time so I take more photos. Before buying Lightroom, I was using Adobe
Photoshop and Bridge and found it to be cumbersome and time consuming. Adobe Lightroom provides more time to do
what I love, take photos.
Adobe Photoshop allows me to do some very cool editing to
the photos, removing fences or distractions in the backgrounds or making very
creative photo collages for clients with several horses in one photo.
Adobe Lightroom – Lightroom is a photo management and photo adjustment program. It
specializes in quick handling of raw images. In Lightroom, sorting out the
rejects and then rating the remaining images is very quick, and the process can
be entirely keyboard-based. Aside from
the considerable benefit that my photos are now organized in an
easy-to-retrieve fashion, I have the bonus that my master images are still in
raw.
When you edit the photos the original
is “never” touched and can always be returned to the original image. Adobe Lightroom is
actually closest to Aperture and is less expensive than Photoshop. It also
integrates well with Adobe products.
Lightroom retails for $299
iPhoto – iPhoto is quick, easy, and a solid repository
for folks who do minimal editing, but value ease-of-use and flexibility (such
things as books, slideshows, email, etc.)
You are limited with easy to find photos, storage solutions, editing
limitations etc. It’s a nice program for
the amateur photographer who’s not taking a lot of photos.
Importing and exporting in this program can take an insane
amount of time. I imported about 300
photos from a wedding and it took more than two hours.
Purchasing a quality program is worth the money if you’re
taking a lot of photographs. iPhoto is
quite inexpensive and retails for about $79.00.
Aperture is more suited to the serious photo-hobbyist or
professional and offers significant power to those who use RAW images. This
software is the mid-priced solution.
Aperture is an excellent tool, especially if you take a lot of pictures.
Aperture is also a "non-destructive" editor. Aperture definitely
beats out iPhoto with its editing tools. Aperture retails for $199
Photoshop is an image-manipulation program.
Photoshop works with images one at a time and allows you to do much more
with them than you can with Lightroom, provided you are willing to put in the
time per image that Photoshop requires.
It provides very little in the way of organizing the images, so even
people who use Photoshop extensively for processing their images often also use
Lightroom or some other program to help with organization. Photoshop retails for: $699
Adobe Bridge is a powerful media manager that allows you to easily organize,
browse, locate, and view creative assets.
Bridge includes more of the
presentation/sharing features of iPhoto than does Aperture, and makes sharing
between Adobe CS3 applications really convenient (but not so much sharing with
other applications). It is also more
"high-end" than iPhoto, closer to Aperture in the quantity and type
of information. Since it is part of the
CS3 suite, you need to purchase a fairly expensive package to get it (not
available separately). Bridge, on its own, does not offer any image
manipulation functionality. If you are
looking for more features or you have a mountain of images to track, Adobe
Photoshop Lightroom 2 is a professional tool that's up to the task.
Photoshop Elements is Photoshop’s cut down version and may meet all the needs of an amateur
photographer, but not those of a professional. There is only one
compelling reason to choose Photoshop Elements over Photoshop--price. Photo Elements retails for $79.
There are other ways to
store photos after you’ve downloaded and edited the images. You can burn images onto a CD or DVD and
store them in folders alphabetically with the event name and date on the cases. Or you can purchase a second hard-drive that
is used strictly to store images. If you
purchase a hard-drive to store your photos I would recommend keeping a backup
copy on a DVD as well. Inevitably
computer technology will fail at some point, and you don’t want to find
yourself with a hard-drive that no longer working.
I like to download the
images and make a back-up before I even start editing the images.
What works best for you
will take a bit of trial and error, but you’ll soon find what it efficient.
Finally, you can rent
storage space on the internet.
Helpful Websites, Links or Forums
There is a lot of
information online for equine photographers.
The more you learn, the better photographer you’ll become.
·
Equine Photographers - This is a great forum
for learning. http://www.equinephotographers.org/
·
Fred Miranda – This is a great site
to ask questions, find used gear for a great price and learn more about general
photography. This is a free site unless
you are going to sell equipment. The
people I’ve met here are great photographers and typically the used products
are of great quality. http://www.fredmiranda.com/
·
KEH camera – Another great site
that sells used equipment http://www.keh.com/
·
Photo Cheat Sheets – These are quick and easy camera
reference guides for digital photography and digital cameras. http://www.photocheatsheets.com/
·
Professional
Photographers Association – The world’s
largest nonprofit association for professional photographers, with more than
20,000 members in 54-countries
http://www.ppa.com/
·
American Society of Media
Photographers - http://www.asmp.org/
Helpful Photograph
Tips
Before you click your first shutter,
be sure you have the equipment and knowledge.
If you are unprepared for the task, people will always remember that and
it will make it very difficult to move forward.
If you're taking photos with a digital
camera, don't take the photos by looking through the LCD
screen. Instead, turn off the screen,
and look through the viewfinder. With many models of digital cameras taking
photos by using the screen causes the camera to respond more slowly after you
press the shutter button. The slow response is only a fraction of a second, but
it can easily be enough time for a horse move and ruin your shot.
·
Take lots and lots of photos; keep only the good ones (which probably
won't be very many), and delete the others (which will be most of what you
take). This is one of the biggest "secrets" used by professional
photographers.
·
Look for different angles and don’t get stuck in the “same box”, taking
the same photo all the time. For example, shooting up from the ground when
a horse is jumping a fence can result in unique horse photographs that capture
a fairly common image from a totally different perspective.
·
Always check your ISO
before you begin shooting any event.
It’s easy to forget to switch it back to where you might need it for
your next event. I’ve taken photos in an
indoor arena with the ISO at 1600 due to poor lighting and when I moved outside
lost several images because I forgot to adjust the ISO. The main thing to remember with your ISO
setting is the smaller the number the less noise in your final image. However, there are times when you need a high
ISO and will have to sacrifice a clear crisp grain free image. For instance, when photographing in an indoor
arena. For handheld shots in the daytime
with little movement you can get by with ISO 100. For action shots during the daytime in
outdoor arenas I use at least an ISO of 400.
When photographing horses indoors typically my ISO is at least 1600. The more you practice, the more you’ll learn
what works for your specific setting.
·
Read as much as possible on photography techniques. If you read a book a week, in one year you’ll
have the equivalent of a PhD in equine photography.
·
Remember to get in close and
fill your frame. When shooting from a distance, it helps to use the
zoom feature on the camera or to invest in a telephoto lens.
·
Keep an eye on the
horse’s ears. Horses don't look as attractive when their ears are
laid back or flicked in opposite direction.
·
Minimize the background
unless you are taking “panning” photos.
·
Learn everything you can about your camera and remember to read your
camera manual thoroughly and always keep it with you in your gear bag. Photo Cheat Sheets are helpful as well.
·
Keep a notebook in your
camera bag. It’s a handy tool for
writing down how you captured certain moments.
·
Always shoot RAW if your
camera is capable of taking images in RAW format. Once you get used to this you won’t go back to shooting JPG files. Remember, the
RAW file format gives you much more control over your image. Using the
conversion software you can adjust the image sharpness, contrast, tone &
color, add filters, adjust the white balance, adjust the exposure by two stops
either direction and choose which format and resolution you want saved. If you shoot in JPG format, once the image is
taken, aside from the post processing in Photoshop, you are very limited with
what you can do to 'fix' any problems that may arise. The draw back with
shooting RAW is, of course, the space needed to store the much larger files on
your memory card.
·
When photographing moving
horses, set the auto focus to AI Focus.
There are three settings on your camera for focus: 'One Shot', 'AI Focus' and 'AI Servo'. One
shot focuses on the fixed point in the image so if your subject moves the focus
remains where you initially set it. This
is great if you’re taking photos of a horse that’s not moving. AI Focus sets the initial focus at a fixed
point so when your subject moves your camera will continue to track your
subject making focus adjustments as needed until you take your image. AI Servo is for tracking fast moving
objects. Your camera continues to adjust
the focus on the moving object.
When photographing moving
horses, I typically use the AI Focus because it gives me the best of both
worlds.
·
Try not to shoot in the
“Program Mode”. Break out of your box
and stay away from program and automatic.
Try and use “TV, AV and Manual” settings. This will help you grow as a
photographer. The 'AV' and 'TV' modes,
in my opinion are the equine photographer's best friends. The 'AV' mode allows
you to specify the size of the aperture (while the camera does the rest), which
is great for portraits, close ups and any shots where you want to control the
depth of field. The 'TV' mode allows you to specify the speed of the shutter
(while the camera does the rest), which is obviously great for action, low
light or deliberately slow exposure shots where you want to control the clarity
and sharpness of a moving object.
·
Photograph
everything! Don’t just look at what’s in
front of you. Look up, beside, around
and all over. The more you observe
everything, the more unique photo ideas you’ll have. Visit the tack room and photograph bridles,
bits, saddles, and a de-wormer box. Look
at the ground, maybe there are some unique hoof prints. Look at the stall doors and things hanging on
the wall.
·
Have patience when
working with horses. Horses aren’t
always going to be on their best behavior.
Allow plenty of time when working with horses. You might even find that if you come back an
hour later, the horse will have a different attitude.
·
Practice, Practice, Practice! When it comes to photographing horses you cannot
practice enough. Every good photographer will tell you that taking any sort of
image is a learned skill that comes through time, patience and experience. So, get out there and practice, practice,
practice!
ASSIGNMENT
Photograph
#1 – Using what you have learned about shutter speed take a photo that expresses
a feeling or sense of motion or speed.
You can use a fast shutter speed to “freeze” the action or you can use a
slow shutter speed to “pan” the camera, but make sure to keep your subject
sharp. Submit your best photo.
Photograph
#2 – Create a feeling of distance by showing a great depth of field. For example, photograph horses in a pasture that
are 10 feet to 40 feet away. To achieve
the necessary depth of field, set your lens to its smallest opening, f/16 or
f/22. Submit your best photo.
Evaluate
Both Photos - With photograph 1 and photograph 2 what I would like you to do is
to critique your own work. Point out 3
things you really like about each photo and 3 things you would change if you
were to photograph the same image again.
If you're uploading in Flickr or another program you can write the
information below each photo or submit the information in an email. Use everything you've learned in this course
to really look objectively at your work.
Please
send your assignment and pictures to info@lynettesmith.com