Portfolio Week 4

Portfolio

Week 4

Photography Inspiration 

I've loved these Silhouette Images that "Shelley Paulson" does since the first moment I saw them and the whole time I've been doing this project all I've wanted to do is try at least one BUT unfortunately weather and circumstances never really allowed for me to get ones similar to Shelley's BUT I was determined I was going to attempt at least one before my project needed to be completed so even though the weather was horrible on the day I tried this, this was the image I finally got from my first shoot of week 4 with my Mum and her 30yr old Stallion Naamishka.

When I took this image I asked Mum to lead Naamishka to the top of a hill and then get herself and Naamishka side on to the camera so I could see Naamishka's whole body and Mum wouldn't be blocked by Naamishka's silhouette. I then tried to expose the sky hoping that it would underexpose everything else and it did and the images came out really well. I turned the images black and white on Photoshop for a little added effect, BUT even though I couldn't get the red sky like Shelley's the images still reminded me a lot of her's which is exactly what I wanted :)

Portfolio Artist Research/Alicja Zmyslowska

Alicja Zmyslowska is a 19 yr old Polish photographer, who mainly takes images of dogs but also takes connection images between dogs and dogs and dogs and people BUT also occasionally takes images of people and other animals.

When I saw these images what really caught my attention was the colours and the background as well as the connections shown. Alicja has stated that she likes to take images of animals in different locations that best suit the situation, stating "for portraits I like to use the forest and for dog motion, I prefer more open spaces like meadows.. I have a few places in my area that I like to go shooting. Which one I choose depends on the season, weather and also on what type of pictures I want to take. 

I wasn't fully able to concentration on location and background for this weeks photographs as we don't own a horse float so I couldn't ask Mum if she wanted to drive to location and Heather doesn't own a float either, BUT I did manage to get some location shots which I was really happy with and I think match what Alicja is doing here in her images.

My Portfolio Images

Shoot 1

This and the silhouette image above were images from the first shoot I did of week 4 of my Mum and her beautiful 30yr old Arabian stallion Naamishka. I really wanted to get images of my Mum and Naamishka for this project cause if anyone is able to show true connection it's these two. My Mum owned his mother and breed Naamishka 30yrs ago and has owned him ever since and he is a really big part of our family. There hasn't been a year in my life that this horse hasn't been in. 

I wanted to attempted an image where the horse is looking more towards the camera while the owner is looking at them, Kinda like the above image of Alicja's, mainly cause a lot of the images I've taken so far have been both horse and rider focused on each other. I found it is really hard to get an image like that though, cause to get an image like that you kinda need the animal to do what you want them to do and that can be quite hard lol. Naamishaka in particular didn't want to put his ears forward or look at the camera in any way shape or form no matter how hard we tried to get him too. To finally get one like this Mum had to pick a stick up of the ground and chuck it over to where I was standing to get his attention and then I had to quickly take time image before his ears went back again, which they did not long after this photo was taken lol. He's still not fully looking straight at the camera like the dog in Alicja's image is BUT gotta work with what you get especially with animals and I quite like this image anyway. 

Shoot 2

This was my 2nd shoot I did of week 4

This shoot is of my Mum's friend Heather and her Peruvian Paso Horses Garlo the Cremello horse in the top three images.  Hera the Sooty Buckskin horse in the Middle two images, and Chana the Black Horse in the bottom two images.

For these images I was mainly just focusing on connection. I thought it was different being offered the chance to photograph different coloured horses to my previous images and also having older people in my images as well and still being able to show that same connection I had with the younger ones. I wanted a variety in horse colour and age for my portfolio so this shoot kinda worked for both, and I love the images I got :)

Shoot 3

This was my third and final shoot of week 4 and my final shoot for this portfolio.

This shoot is of Lily and her horse Mccy D and Rosa and her Horse Toa.

For this shoot I thought more about location. Originally we were going to do a shoot on Waiheke Island with amazing views in the background as Lily is from Waiheke Island but we ended up decided on Whitford Beach which is just as pretty and a really nice place to shoot on a sunny days as it was, which I think matches Alicja's images where she chooses her location to best suit the theme of her shoots.

I think if you want a location to do a shoot with a horse, the beach, a forest, stables, or a meadow are the best place to get images. so being able to do a shoot on the beach was pretty exciting :D

The contrast of colours between the horses was really good too, a lot of my shoots were taken with just a dark or just a white horse in the images so experimenting with both horses in the images was really interesting as well.