Some creaky 20+ year old Ponies are priceless and have waiting lists …just sayin
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Wow, this is an “Aha!” moment for me. I’m that person that’s had to train her own pony because she could only afford one, and when I got said pony, it was a pasture pet (so there’s been a lot of training needed!). The days we have setbacks are especially hard on me, and I realize now it’s because I DON’T have that next horse to add to my confidence bank after my one-and-only has withdrawn from it. I just have to go home, slightly traumatized, with less confidence in my bank than I arrived with.
Thanks for the insight 
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Is it a red flag for a seller to have obviously photoshopped a brand new background into a picture? Is there ever a good reason for such a doctor job on a sales photo? I’m not talking about smudging out faces, I mean a complete cut and paste job.
That would make me a bit suspicious. This isn’t a magazine editorial- it’s a horse sales photo. We expect to see a barn aisle or arena wall, not a fantasy backdrop. I know there an apps that make it really easy to remove the background in one click, but swapping backgrounds is distracting.
There was one TB flipper who was notorious for photoshopping her horses pics to remove blemishes, or add pounds on an underweight horse. If you bought a horse from her based if her pics, a very different looking animal would arrive.
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I know exactly the ad you’re talking about, if it was on FB. People had pointed it out in the comments and the explanation was dumb but seemed innocent. Regardless it did make me suspicious but I’d probably give them the benefit of the doubt. If I reached out and found another red flag, I’d move on from the horse.
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As an occasional seller, I find its been hard to explain to people what the middle ground is.
In the past few years, I’ve sold a few horses who were kind, safe, but not “beginner friendly”. One was a coming 6yo warmblood who never offered to do anything dirty, but he was almost 6. Sometimes he was forward, sometimes he was not, and he didn’t give anything away. He wasn’t hard to put together, but you had to actually ride him. After explaining this to one lady (and showing her by riding him myself), she assured me she was a good enough rider and got on. She asked for the canter, which he picked up nicely, and then he proceeded to canter nicely forward, but not on the bit, with a good pace and an big stride. While she flopped around with loose reins, she started screaming for me to “Stop him! Make him stop!” and I was just like “Lady…sit down and pull on the reins” which she did and he promptly stopped and I practically dragged her off him.
Another horse I sold recently was also very kind, but she was forward. She wasn’t going to take off bolting, but you needed to keep her together and keep her pace from running too much. I had to talk SEVERAL people into not even coming to look at her, because they were very clearly beginners and she very clearly would not be in a good position with them.
People almost always overestimate how good they are as riders, especially when purchasing a horse.
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To me that is not a big deal. It seems like it’s pretty standard in a lot of stallion ads I see - here are some QH ad for example https://halterhorseads.com/portfolio-types/apha-stallions/
People with big $ horses try to get fancy, very common in show programs or breed magazines.
I did, however, see a horse advertised recently with a part of its barrel photoshopped. Could not figure out what that was trying to fix. So I would be a lot more suspicious of a specific area photoshopped than a background.
I totally understand how that’s difficult for sellers, and we all know the story of the overconfident amateur. The Dunning Kruger effect is real.
It also makes it really hard to be a middle ground buyer. For me, beginner safe means lazy, the sensitivity has been trained out of them, or doesn’t have potential for the upper levels. Pro ride means behavioral issues that I may or may not want to handle, even if I “could.”
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Well, I’ve also seen the photoshopped horse (mostly paints). I guess I just don’t get why someone would take the time to photoshop a picture for an ad. If there was something about the background it seems it would be easier to choose, or take, a different picture.
BTW: this was not quite like the stallion ads.
I definitely take the time to photoshop pictures for ads. In fact, this is what I’m working on right now. I don’t pop horses out of one background and put them on another; there really isn’t much point to that. But I will do portrait shots on black and it can take some work to fully edit out the background in those types of photos. Or if a background is overly distracting (for example, if there’s a person in a brightly colored shirt walked somewhere behind the horse), I’ll edit the distraction out.
There truly is a lot of value in using quality photography on sales horses. Good photography should capture your attention and present the horse well. It will set your horse apart in a sea of ads using photos that can be fairly meh. Just because a background may be edited out (as it would be in a portrait shot on black), this does not necessarily mean anything is being hidden.
When it comes to alterations, I will absolutely not ever do any work that changes or misrepresents a horse’s conformation or overall condition. I imagine most ethical photographers operate similarly. I will sometimes remove minor scrapes on portrait-style shots, but this is strictly for a small scrape that will heal and be gone. I won’t remove anything permanent such as a scar, or anything that would leave a scar, as I feel that would be a misrepresentation of the horse. The sellers I photograph for are honest and would be more than happy to provide up-to-date smartphone snapshots of the horse at any time if there was ever any question about current condition. Videos are also available.
Sorry for the mini-novel, it just made me a bit sad to see that some folks feel that edited photos of horses can come across as a red flag. I am super passionate about photography and I love to create eye-catching photos that make horses stand out and look good!
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This picture wasn’t like that. I wouldn’t complain about, or question, a professionally done ad where things were obviously cut out and set onto a plain/neutral background or even a less professional attempt at that style of ad. I’ve seen enough of those.
The seller was clearly hiding the original background of this photo. It was not a cut out type job for a professional ad. I’m looking at the margins and the original backdrop was some sort of gray arena /barn type wall (neutral enough) with the foreground being the horse in an arena and it was replace with something that was supposed to be reminiscent of trees with a lot of heavy coloring to blend in the cut job.
This ad was a horse pasted onto a different background, except that it wasn’t cut or blended well and the horse had a grey “aura” around it. The photoshop was very obvious.
About sales photos: if I see an ad with pictures really well done, I just assume I can’t afford the horse.
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Giving the seller the (questionable) benefit of the doubt, maybe they don’t want the location of the horse to be obvious to random people seeing the ad. To prevent unscheduled drop-ins, maybe? Other than that, I can’t think of a good reason.
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Ah, gotcha. I didn’t see the photo y’all are discussing; apologies if it was linked and I missed it. Was just going off of comments about background removal creating suspicion, specifically on sale horse photos. I would definitely be cautious if a seller had a reputation for manipulating photos to misrepresent horses, or a poorly done hack job. Unfortunately it is true that there are people in the world that will doctor photos to hide things that should not be hidden.
Speaking of: A lady sent me a number of warmblood projects on Facebook. I was curious about why this lady had so many just-started warmblood projects for sale and went to her Facebook page-- her “warmbloods” for sale were OTTB she was buying off the track and trying to flip after a brief letdown period. 
Not that I have a problem with her flipping OTTB, but it’s kind of a misrepresentation, no?
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See, I would think it would have been easier to just post a less identifying picture.
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Back to the main subject - holy moly, this is bonkers to me!!!
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You’re right, it would have. But I was just trying to think of a reasonable reason they might have done this. Maybe they already had the photo and couldn’t easily get out and take another.
Or maybe they’re hiding something nefarious.
Still very interested in this young mare and would like to see her. She is at a barn known for breeding and selling horses. I talked with the sales person/manager last week, told her I was very interested, and sent a follow up email with a couple of other questions same day. She said over the phone she would send pictures for me that I requested that day or the day after. No reply after the weekend, so I sent another reminder email yesterday. Have not heard back yet.
This woman must be super busy, I know, but I did expect a well known farm in the business of selling and breeding horses to be a little bit better at communication. She also doesn’t own the horse— I think if I was paying someone to sell my horse I would be frustrated that they weren’t communicating with buyers.
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I was at a tack/garage sale one day and the woman had two horses for sale. Potential buyer was there to look at one of them and seller tacked it up and mounted. She immediately went from trot to canter and horse bucked her off and broke her leg. She probably hasn’t ridden either one in months or possibly years and expected them to behave. I turned to the potential buyer and said You probably don’t want to buy that one do you? She laughed. They had to call the aid car to take the seller to the hospital.
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