"There is no secret so close as that between a rider and his horse"
I wanted to make portraits of Andy the stunt man/horse master and Barney the horse (to be precise the famous legendary film horse which appeared also in "Knight's tale" having Heath Ledger on its back. This is from my series of portraits "Bond of love" where I would like to make portraits of interesting people and their animal friends so to speak. I am looking for a special kind of relationship between them. I am still searching for more models (bought human and animal) for my project Bond of love, if you know any interesting people and their animal friend with a story to tell, let me please know studio@kardhordo.com
In this case I know Andy for more than 15 years, he is a special guy, not only he is professional, he is also sharing love and respect all around him. He treats horses with the same love and respect as human beings and he loves them with all his heart.
The idea behind this photograph was to get the War Horse movie poster look (Andy is horse master/stunt man and he was working on great amount of american movies and War horse was one of them).
Knowing your subject, letting your subject become familiar with you and your intention to photographed him, your ideas is crucial. While photographing let your subject stay relaxed and comfortable, communicate with him/her about your ideas, compliment and appreciate them if they doing something what you like. They are in your hands, they have to feel that you know what you are doing. They rely to you.
On the day of photo session with Andy and Barney was a nice summer, sunny evening.
I prepared two Elinchrom flash lights on the field and made some test shots before the actual photo session began.
Using Elinchrom Quadra battery pack with 2 heads.One with Rotalux Soft Octa aimed on the subjects face from more than 45 degree and second one with standard reflector and warming gel on from back to imitate the sunset. Flashes were positioned from the side where the sun was shining, from the same direction.
Here is the lighting diagram:
On the day of shooting there was no clouds on the sky unfortunately but couple of days later I was driving to work and there it was (right after the storm) a beautiful sun set as I passed by this interesting landscape view.
I was lucky because I had my small camera Canon PowerShot S95 on me so I made couple of pictures shooting in raw.
Then I composited those two photographs together and this is the finished product.
for more info:www.kardhordo.com
