THE EQUINE PORTRAITURE CHEAT SHEET

My average natural light shoot typically starts approximately an hour before sunset. Once I’ve arrived, here’s how I work:

• Canon 5DSR• My camera on Aperture priority. If shooting a backlit scene, then it’s onto manual, with a quick switch to get the correct exposure• My aperture will change depending on the shot, however usually remains somewhere between f3.2 and f8• My ISO changes as the light changes. If I need a faster shutter speed, I’ll pop the ISO up however if it gets too noisy, I will usually widen the aperture and lose a little depth of field rather than raise the ISO too high• I rarely go under a shutter speed of 1/1000s, but that’s just me. Sometimes I’ll pull a rabbit from a hat and get a nice sharp image at 1/500th of a second• I am continuously changing my metering settings depending on the movement of the horses. If they are mainly stationary, I am on ‘One shot’. If they are trotting or cantering in the paddock, then I flick over to ‘Servo’ to track them• At the end of each shoot, I come home, load up the images on my desktop and save to a hard drive immediately!