Horse and flash...

This Saturday evening I headed out to the Foxes Riding School in Ledsham on the Wirral, to meet up with Cress and his rider Angela. The mission was to get some photographs of them, full portrait, head shots of Cress and action shots.

  

This isn't the first time I've photographed horses, but it was going to be the first using studio flash, I had no idea how the horse would react with flashes popping off all around him.

So whilst Angela schooled him on a lead rope, I set up a Canon speedlight 550EX on a tripod, aiming it at the wall to start with. I fired it, nothing, no reaction from Cress, so moving the 550 around so it was pointing towards Cress, I fired it again, still no adverse reaction, a few more flashes and still no reaction I was good to go.

I unload and set up my Bowens Gemini Pro heads, plugged them into a couple of Bowens Travelpaks and set to work. The heads have a very fast flash duration, even though I was running almost at full power, so there's very little in the way of movement blur in the images, the strip-lights illuminating the indoor arena had no effect on the images at all.

Next time though we will definitely be shooting outdoors in daylight, though I might well use the Bowens heads again to add some dramatic effect. I must thank Angela and especially Cress for the opportunity to get these images, and to Cress again for not taking exception to my equipment or myself. I think you'd agree he's a beautiful horse.