Photographing Horses, Part III: The Importance of Backgrounds

To keep the Photographing Horses Series active, I’ll plan on posting new photography tips every Tuesday.

Part II  of this series, Making Your Lovelies Lovely,  is available here.

The horses are groomed in the cross-ties with care, in hopes that Dear Photographer soon will be there.  But before you bring out the camera, make a plan of  where to take your pictures.   An unorganized background is distracting for the viewer.   Once the horses are out snorting around it is easy to get tunnel vision and ignore the hay feeder sticking up in the background behind them.

For photographs of  my own gang this year, I used a small grassy turnout area.  A small pasture or a fenced arena are other good options.  This one was small enough to keep the horse in motion.  It was grassy, but clipped relatively short so feet and legs would still be clearly visible.  Unforuntately, one end is very near the house, which  left me with plenty of opportunities for shot like this:

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By changing where I was standing from the center of the turnout to against the front railing,  I was able to get a line with a cleaner backdrop.  The trees in the background above are the same as those in the first picture.  By moving myself 15 feet back and changing the angle I was facing, I was able to get a more pleasant shot the next time he came around.

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Another option for keeper shots was at the opposite end of the turnout, away from the house:

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The above isn’t perfect as it is  cluttered with fence lines and view of the neighbor’s property, but it tells a consistent story of  fence and barn in the distance.  The neighbor’s house is hidden behind the evergreen trees but you can see the driveway on the right hand side.

Think through where the “sweet spots” are for pictures before you head out with your camera and horse.  Take your shots when your horse is in those areas, not as they travel all around the pasture.  Use the guidelines below to help guide your location search:

• The Basics
• What color is your horse?  Dark or light?  Chestnuts, palominos and greys do well against deep tree foliage due to their light and bright coloring.  Dark bays or blacks may blend and ears especially get lost against dark green backgrounds.
• If the area you’re shooting is a regular turnout for your horses, get the fork out and clean up visible manure before hand.
• As much as possible, eliminate distractions in the background.  This includes the corner of the house, the pile of fire wood, a tree that appears to sprout from the middle of your horse.  As it usually isn’t possible to move the background, move your own position or the horse’s position.
• Keep the color story of the photograph simple.   For example, in the photograph above, the driveway and barn “fit in” with the image because they have the same muted tones as the rest of the background.  Imagine if the barn were painted sunshine yellow and the driveway lined with scoria.
• Remember to change your perspective.  Squat down to get more of the sky in your picture if this helps eliminate distracting items.  (There are also other benefits to shooting from a lower angle that we’ll talk about in a subsequent post)
• Be careful of dissecting your horse with vertical lines: this includes a single tree growing up from your horse’s body or head.  Make sure your horse has a clean silhouette immediately around him, whatever the background.
• If you can’t eliminate all the background clutter,organize it in the frame so that it tells a consistent story with simple uncomplicated lines.  The fencing and barn in the photograph above are an example of this.
• Police the corners of the image.  Branches & tree limbs can be used successfully for framing an image when used in a group, but be vigilant of single branches or other sudden distractions poking in alone at the edge.
• Take advantage of the seasons: full summer trees often hide distractions as do bright colored leaves in the fall.  A blanket of snow automatically covers up any number of background sins by muting everything in the background.  The same is true with foggy mornings.  Unfortunately, bad weather usually makes great photographs.
• Advanced Techniques
• For those shooting with an SLR camera, reduce your aperture to blur the background.  This more advanced technique will be explained in detail in a subsequent post.  For those already familiar with your camera settings, this means moving to a smaller f stop number on the camera.  Be careful to not change it so far that portions of the horse are also out of focus.  With digital, it is easy to experiment to get the right effect and reinforce your understanding of your cameras settings as you shoot.
• Practice panning the camera to follow your horse’s motion.  This means moving the camera to keep pace with a fast moving subject as it passes by you.  Plant your feet on the ground and track the subject by turning your body and camera through a horizontal plane.  This will result in a slightly blurred background with a sharp subject.   It adds a tangible feeling of speed to an image.  Be warned, this can be a difficult technique to master.  I throw away more shots than I keep using this, but it can have great results.
• Use the blackout method.  This is especially effective for head and neck shots.  In fairly bright sunshine, position the horse facing out at the entryway of a barn door.  The sun should not be directly behind you, but rather at an angle to one side.     The resulting image should show the horse herself in bright sunlight and with a  solid black background behind (the unlit interior of the barn).    Experiment using a low powered flash with these shots as well.  Many assume these backgrounds are created in Photoshop, but they were staple of horse advertising even when film was king.
• There are also any number of techniques to edit your images in Photoshop or similar image editing software.  In the digital media, it is relatively easy to remove unwanted items from the background with the clone or retouch features.  To be honest, I’m not a big fan, even though I use digital editing  in other parts of my business.  While great for removing small dust motes or a stray pile of manure, many of the tools are easy to try but difficult to truly master.  Too often there are tell tale signs that the background has been “monkeyed with”.  Digital editing requires a fair amount of time and patience to do well.  In my mind, it is just more efficient to make the best possible image you can in-camera and save the digital  clean-up features for emergencies.

Applying the rules:

If you had the opportunity to re-shoot the two images below how would you improve upon them?

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My answers on Saturday.

Next time, I’ll talk about equipment.  Reading Mikael’s post here on the frustrations of buying new cameras has inspired me to share some tips.

Tags: equine photography, horse photography