Photographer Mom

February 7, 2020

As I photographer I wear two hats. First, I love to travel in pursuit of scenic nature and wildlife subjects. I’ve ventured far afield with my camera gear by automobile, airplane, and boat, from the South Pacific to the Arctic to Africa, from desert vistas to underwater realms. I have struggled to come up with a simple label that could summarize the variety of my subject matter, until recently a mentor suggested Wanderlust and Wildlife. Perfect!

And second, I am a lifelong horse person. My mother was a horsewoman, I grew up with horses, and I currently have a farm with about twenty equine residents. I raise a couple of foals each year and provide a retirement home for some old-timers. And my daughter Michelle is continuing the family legacy in her professional career as a trainer, rider, and coach of show jumpers.

That’s me in a photo taken many decades ago in Nogales, Arizona, riding my mom’s thoroughbred mare Wait For Me.

So when I attend the horse shows to watch Michelle ride and cheer on my young horses, I wear my other hat and am known around the barn as Photographer Mom. That moniker may have to expand, because my granddaughter is showing similar symptoms of a serious horse passion. Do I really want to be called Photographer Grandma?

All of which is a lengthy introduction to my first blog of 2020 – a collection of equine images created during the big Desert Circuit in Thermal, California. First of all, I am going to reveal a dark secret. I am not one of those photographers who ‘captures it in camera’. For me, my images are the RAW material (double entendre for any serious photogs reading this) from which I draw creative inspiration. I’ve decided to adopt the phrase Art From Photography as my mantra.

To illustrate, I’m going to share the transformation of an image as it progresses from 1: Straight out of camera 2: Quick crop and edit 3: More aggressive crop and edit, and finally 4: In-depth photo processing (yes, Photoshop) to create my own artistic interpretation of the scene. Here’s a photo that is an extreme example of that workflow.

Because I am shooting from outside the show arena, most of the jumps are pretty far away, especially in Thermal where the Grand Prix field is enormous. This calls for a powerful zoom lens but, even so, sometimes the distances are pretty extreme. This shot was taken as sort of a throwaway effort. I was set up to shoot some big oxers close by the rail, so that I could fill my camera frame. But as long as I was there, why not aim at a few of the more distant jumps just for the heck of it.

Here is the original photo, straight out of the camera. Taken from far away with a 100-400mm zoom lens (because I forgot to switch to the 200-600mm), underexposed, and crooked! I’m embarrassed to share it with you.

Here it is with a quick touch-up. Cropped, straightened, and some quick exposure adjustments. Often I do this on the showgrounds by exporting the image from my camera to my iPhone and tweaking it there to make it presentable for a quick share.

Here it is with more careful post-processing once I am home on my computer with my digital darkroom tools at hand.

And here’s the final creation, courtesy of Photoshop, art filters, and a heavy dose of artistic license.

I titled this image “XOXO”. I love the unique style of this horse, crossing his hind feet to stay clear of the jump. Even better, his crossed ankles are repeated in the criss-crossed jump standards in the background.

And this is a good time to give a shout-out to the professional horse show photographers who shoot every single horse that enters the ring, all day, every day. They run back and forth umpteen times from vantage point #1 to vantage point #2 for each and every round. They kneel, stand up and kneel again, over and over (my aging knees barely withstand even one crouch and recover). And there is no way they have the time to post-process the hundreds of photographs they take each and every day during a show. They really do have to get it right ‘straight out of the camera’, whereas I have the luxury of following around a handful of horse/rider combinations, taking multiple shots of each through the week, then culling out the bad and zeroing in on the good. Which is a labor of love because I truly enjoy the creative process involved.

And I enjoy sharing the results with you. Here are a few keepers from last week at the show. Not all resulted from such dramatically challenging origins, but now you know my deepest, darkest secret!

By the way, I hardly ever wear a hat!

‘Art From Photography’