The horse photo shoot

As a commercial photographer I don’t do a lot of free work.

Except when it is to delve into something completely different from what I usually shoot (automotive, motorsport or portrait photography), to start a new challenge!

Easier said than done!

This time, I had the chance to shoot a horse in the dunes of “Drunense duinen” in the center of Holland. Upon arrival, I had this idea of letting the horse jump over an obstacle and use flashes to capture the moment.

After getting my Elinchrom equipment out of the car, we came across a little problem. How could we build an obstacle in the dunes with only a couple of branches ? We immediately thought the trolley could come in handy and find its double purpose.

Hi-Sync, the ultimate solution.

Once we managed to set up the scene, I had to decide what kind of picture I wanted. I saw that the ambient light was pretty interesting with a moody sky (I love clouds) and I really wanted to use it the best I could in my picture.

For me, the Elinchrom Hi-Sync (HS) system was the ultimate solution for this photoshoot. It enables to get a complete control over the ambient light.

Mix ambient and flash light.

The first step in the photoshoot was to get an adequate measurement of ambient light and capture that in my Canon 1Dx.

It came at a fairly slow shutter speed at 100 iso. I had to compensate that with a higher iso to obtain the fast shutter speed I wanted. For the ambient light it was 1/3200 at 800 iso f5.6, now I had my ambient light under control and under expose by 2/3 of a stop to get a nice contrast in the sky.

After that, I could easily dial in my ELB 400 units to get the right exposure on the horse and its rider and there it was! I just shot a horse!

The horse could only jump 5 times due to cold weather and a lot of spectators (it was a public place), so we had to be very careful !

For my light setup I used an ELB 400 with a Quadra HS head mounted with a Rotalux Octa 175 as main light and a separate ELB 400 with a HS head mounted with a Maxi Spot reflector as rim light camera right.

After that, I could easily dial in my ELB 400 units to get the right exposure on the horse and its rider and there it was! I just shot a horse!

The horse could only jump 5 times due to cold weather and a lot of spectators (it was a public place), so we had to be very careful !

For my light setup I used an ELB 400 with a Quadra HS head mounted with a Rotalux Octa 175 as main light and a separate ELB 400 with a HS head mounted with a Maxi Spot reflector as rim light camera right.

Thanks to the high power output and the possibility of working with higher shutter speeds, the maximum sync speed allowed me to create a nice balance and shallow depth of field in my picture!

The Hi-Sync system was an absolute game changer for this shot!