The Great Escape..

One thing I have enjoyed over the last few years is producing artworks for a couple of galleries. It started out just with a few Barn Owl images that had done well in comps, it also made me get out and shoot a lot more subjects. Plus it is so nice to know that pieces of my work are being viewed and appreciated.

I think my main theme in most of my work is from a nature aspect, but with equine very close behind. I love capturing nature in it’s own environment, the equine, I love the movement. I am not a great fan of the posed shots, I do them and use them in comps. But when a animal is running free, it’s a great thing to watch. Since my first horse shot “White Horse”, I love doing horse shoots, the first hour of the shoot, was taking some posed shots while we got the horse used to the lights. It was after that, we worked on my idea, allowing the horse free to run around the arena, two lights set, one in the middle of the arena, the other to the edge. As the horse passed my set up, I got my shots, with the lights fired across the front of the horse, the muscle structure really showed out. 

Most of the time I will have an idea of a shot I want to capture, then I normally go with “how am I going to light this?”. This was definitely one of those moments. Others just come by chance, after a night shot covering herons and otters, I came away with some cracking images, more about these critters coming soon. I ended up with an image I liked very much, but it had something missing. It was a shot of a heron and it’s perfect reflection, the only thing missing was his head as he was fishing. I had this image laying around for a while, been working on other stuff, some compositions. That was it, I had an idea, it just needed something more. A couple of phone calls and a 10 minute shoot with my grandson Leo’s fan tailed goldfish and I had the answer. Little photoshop work, add fish, reflection, some water droplets, a clean… now for a title… “The Great Escape”.. this fish was small but just enough to throw a dash of colour into the image. Not my normal kind of work, but one I’m happy with and proud of…