Halter Photos

     Despite being a professional wedding photographer--I have been paid to take photos at 5 weddings, which makes me a professional, lol-- I am not an amazing photographer. Meaning I have not taken any classes on photography, don't know cool camera tricks, or even what all the crap on cameras means. For me it has always been a lot of trial and error to figure out which setting will take the best photo under any particular circumstance. Well, with digital cameras anyway, with manual I just know how to focus and take a decent picture. Anyway, for years now I have been considering upgrading my old camera. I have a Canon sx10is, which was the best (and most expensive) camera I ever owned. And it was not stellar when I bought it, just good to great depending on the setting. Over the years it seems to have deteriorated. The quality is not really there anymore, under most circumstances. My cell phone takes better photos. And iPhones really like to highlight things (lint, dust, the tiniest speck of something that can't be seen with the naked eye) that can't be seen unless you zoom in. That made it really hard to take any model horse photos worth keeping. I have been frustrated about it for years. There are likely ways to get around this, I don't know them. 

     Finally I decided to do something about it. I can't really say I blame Jennifer Buxton for this, but she and I were talking about cameras, photography, photo showing, and she sort of convinced me to finally get a new camera. I said that even if I bought the exact camera Jennifer uses won't help my photos much because she doesn't come with it to take the pictures for me. Her response "it will help". Well poop. I guess I it was time to research and buy a new camera. 

     So I attacked this issue the same way I did when I wanted to buy a new car. First I thought about what I need. For my car it was something heavier than my 4 cylinder Dodge Neon (so, almost anything) that preferably had 4 wheel drive or all wheel drive (because snow). Then it was reading reviews from people who had owned the types of car I was looking for. And after that it was searching for the exact car I wanted. 

    For the camera, I looked up the best DSLR cameras for beginners, because even though I have some basic photography knowledge I am absolutely a beginner (through sheer quantities of pictures I do sometimes get lucky and get an excellent shot here and there). I found a list of the top 10 best DSLR cameras for beginners. I was pretty sure I wanted a Nikon since everyone I know who has a Nikon loves them. So then I thought about what else I wanted and needed. Mostly I take photos of model horses. I need something that is good for small scale photos. Performance is not necessarily small, but what if I wanted good photos of my micros? The Mares in Black Spooktacular Photo Show is happening and there are halter classes for minis and micros. Those things are hard to get good photos of! Anyway, I looked up another list of the best DSLR cameras for macro photography and the Nikon from the first list was on it. So was the one Canon I was considering. So then I took those 2 and found a side-by-side comparison article. The Nikon won in the category that mattered the most to me--picture quality. 

     My new camera arrived on Thursday and I didn't have time, or energy, to set up any performance photos. It was time to take out some minis and micros and see what I could do. So after charging the battery I started bringing micros outside. I barely knew how to turn on the new camera (not really, it literally says "on" "off") but I was going to play and figure things out. 

      I ended up with a lot of blurry, or slightly blurry photos. Or partially blurry photos. Sometimes that was baffling to me. But I finally realized what I was doing wrong. The camera tells you where it is focusing when you partially hold the shutter button down. All I had to do was keep adjusting (and taking photos) so all the parts of the horse would be in focus. But I didn't learn that lesson until I was editing on day one. 

     Still, this was a day one photo of my micro Sixjay. I like this photo. It came out pretty well, the horse is in focus, and if I didn't tell you it was a micro you might not know it. Other than that is some ginormous woodgrain!

     When I was editing photo I decided I needed to retake almost all of horses. I knew I could do better. This is where I can start to blame Jennifer a bit. She has a great camera. She is an excellent photographer. She also retakes photos over and over and over, if needed. Well, sometimes your pictures are not magical right from go. So I redid a lot of them. This is Sixjay's new photo. I really love this photo and feel it is far superior to the photo from session 1. The only thing I did to this photo was crop it. Everything else I did (on purpose!) with my camera. 

     Here is a photo from session 1 of my custom Croi. I love this photo. I think it came out really well, shows off the horse nicely, and is overall pleasing to look at. 

    As much as I like the photo from session 1, I did some retakes and I think the below photo is better for halter. The stone planter behind the horse in the first photo isn't distracting, I don't think, but the simple blurred background in the second photo really makes Croi stand out. I might be out of my mind of course. 

     So next we have Barnaby (one of them, I have a couple/few). I really, really love this photo. I think the horse looks incredibly realistic. The angle is perfect so you can see his face, but also his side completely, which is usually what is wanted for halter photos. This is my absolute favorite photo from session 1. 

   Even though I had a photo I loved I did do some retakes. I like this photo of Barnaby. I still like the one from session 1 better. I might try another retake to try to capture the same angle from the first photo with the blurred background of the second, but we'll see. 

     Finally, I am in love with this photo of my MICRO Mira. The blurring in the background worked really well while the horse is perfectly crisp. The angle is just right and I am ridiculously proud of this picture. A lot of the amazingness is because of my camera. My iPhone X has a really excellent camera. It is better than my Canon. My new Nikon blows both of them out of the water. Yes, I did some manual adjusting to get these things to work, I did take about 200 photos over 2 days (of 18 horses) until I settled on the ones I liked. But the photo quality, with almost no effort or practice, is mind blowing. I should have bought a new camera years ago. 

     So here we go, a sum up. You can take nice photos with a point and shoot camera. You can take nice photos with a cell phone. You can use those photos as show photos. But I really do think that a nice quality camera will give you better results and it will be much easier. I can take 20 photos of the same setup with my iPhone. One might be good enough to show, or none of them. I have had that happen more times than I want to mention. With the new camera, which is entry level, not professional grade at all, I can take 10 photos and then nitpick which of my 6 best is going to be the halter photo. Micro Mira had about 8 photos to start (I think). I cropped them all and then checked everything over. If I found even a tiny blurred spot on the horse, it got deleted. In the end I chose between 3 photos that were incredibly similar to the one above. This one beat out the others because she happened to look a tiny bit sweater (slight difference in angle). Every photo I took of her with my cell phone, with its very good camera, came out like garbage. Sometimes your equipment absolutely makes the difference. My new camera apparently makes me want to take halter photos. 

   Before I get roasted about how buying camera equipment costs money and not everyone has it and so on, I sacrificed a variety of things from my collection to finance the camera purchase. Sometimes you need to decide which things are the most important to you.