I am looking for the best examples of conformation pictures.
Do you stand them square so you can only see 2 legs, or do you stand them so you can see all 4 from the side?
Do you encourage them to lower their head lower than they would naturally hold it?
I would love to see some photos of horses stood up exemplary.
I don’t care how many legs you can see, but the front and rear cannons must be vertical (breeds shown camped out aside) to give a correct assessment of limb angles, and horse must be on flat ground. Similarly the photo should be taken from a point perpendicular to the belly, otherwise the part nearest the camera (head or butt) appears odddly huge.
Head should be held naturally to show off the neck, or, if aiming for a specific discipline, in line w that (upheaded for certain breeds, very low for some western disciplines and hunters it seems… although I hate that) but ears up for sure!
There are lots of articles on lighting, backgrounds and other aspects, but the above are the basic nonnegotiables that a lot of people get wrong.
Stand back and zoom in a little to help avoid distortion. Have horse exactly parallel to you and stand facing torso not head or rump. Stand up against a non cluttered background with sun shining over your shoulder onto horse. Stand square if you can.
Have a handler to hold horse on a long rope and get his attention. Head facing front not turned to photographer.
You will need to take a lot of photos to get ears up and neck as you want it. Also discard the ones where horse is leaning forward over knees.
Flat area (don’t stand them on grass.)
Don’t have a distracting background.
Pick the right time of day to shoot (golden hour is ideal, noon will be harsh and not flattering.)
*if you have a light gray, an overcast day will be better because bright sun may wash the horse out
You may need 1-2 other people to help hold the horse, shake a grain bucket to get their ears up, etc.
Side photos plus photos from directly in front/directly behind (I don’t have any examples of this.)
Plan on shooting a LOT. For each of these sessions, I probably shot 100+ frames each time and got ~10 keepers.
A pretty headshot isn’t an absolute necessity, but it looks really nice and will certainly help.
Always stand so the near legs have vertical cannon bones, and the far legs are offset under the horse. Having them stand square makes it difficult to impossible to judge the legs, depending on coloring and any peeking of the offside leg which can make the near side leg look fat or with weird lumps.
Do you encourage them to lower their head lower than they would naturally hold it?
It depends on the market. A Dressage horse will be encouraged for a more elevated head, a Hunter for a bit lower and more stretched out. Just don’t ask for HIGH as that distorts things, and if the poll starts going below the withers, you lose the ability to judge the neck.
They should be on a flat, level, firm surface - softer surfaces that allow toes to sink in means you can’t judge feet and lower legs. No leaning forward - distorts angles everywhere.
Light should be behind the camera, not on top of the horse and certainly not behind him.
skipollo’s pictures all have some things which make it difficult to impossible to accurately judge certain things - toes are pointing down in soft footing, hind legs are not vertical, front feet are placed together, and a few others.
This is nearly perfect
https://www.globalequinesires.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/big_49546369_0_400-266.jpg
The change to make it perfect is in the background - the very light footing makes it harder to see the white parts of his legs. His tail is also covering up his RH a good bit, but the positioning of his legs overall is good. His head and neck are higher than how he probably hangs out in the pasture, so it’s not a naturally relaxed position, but it’s also still very natural for his conformation, if that makes sense.
Another that is nearly perfect, another Dressage stallion with a naturally higher neck set, but also posed higher than he probably hangs out in the pasture. But his hind legs can’t be accurately judged because neither of them have a vertical cannon. I suspect sometimes this is done on purpose to hide some degree of being camped out or sickle-hocked, but it’s can be really hard to get them to stand just perfectly, they’re always wanting to lean forward a bit, or shift a leg.
Compare that to Hunter stallions. Notice the much lower neck. He COULD raise it to be more along the lines of the above Dressage stallions, and still be able to be critiqued, but Hunters don’t tend to be presented that way.
http://i42.tinypic.com/efsch0.jpg
His RH is trailing behind him, a common issue with getting them set up. Ideally that LF would be a bit farther back to give a more clear picture of the RF.
IME, the ones who are the absolute best at standing up horses are those taking pics of TB stallions, and yearlings for sale. It doesn’t get much better than this
http://riveroaksthoroughbreds.com/photos/dramedy1thumb.jpg
The nit pick I have is for a completely critiquable pose, the horse needs to be looking straight forward. When they are made to look just a bit to the inside, it gets harder to accurately judge the throat latch. It does’t make a huge difference, as you could still tell if they are really thick, or freaky thin, but if you are looking for a perfect stance for judging the whole horse, they should be looking forward.
Yup - some of the best conformation photos in my experience come from racing TBs. However, that is subjective - because they way they stand up a TB to appeal to TB breeders is different than how, for instance, they might pose an ASB for ASB breeders. Same goes for WBs, QHs, etc. But generally speaking, you want:
When you are ASSESSING a picture to see if it is faithful to the actual angles of the horse look for:
One trend I notice with WB stallions, is the subject is not always captured exactly straight on. Usually, the camera is at a “slight angle” so that the qualities of the head, neck and shoulder are maximized while flaws of the loin and hindquarter are somewhat hidden because the subject is not exactly level with the camera.
And be careful that your camera is level so that the horses feet are absolutely level to the frame of the picture. If there is a horizontal element in the background like a fence rail or a vertical element like a tree or post, you can use that to get your camera squared. A tripod might be nice!
Most cheaper cameras today have lenses that distort a bit and “fish eye.”
If you stand back and zoom in a little you can counteract that. Don’t be afraid to take photo at a slight distance and then crop it a little. Or alter the color or saturation to reduce shadows.
Also check there are no random shadows falling on the horse.
There is very little leeway when it comes to a pose to make the best objective critique of a horse’s structural conformation.
That’s different from how specific breeds and disciplines might set a horse up. A square, parked out stance with a high stretched head and neck is utterly useless for judging conformation for example, so while it might be the norm for Morgans and ASBs and Arabians, it does not lend itself well at all to seeing the true bone structure.
There’s a reason the TB sales photographers stand them up the way they do - very accurate assessments of confo, at least as good as you can get with a single lateral view, and that’s what buyers need to see to judge suitability.
When it comes to actually snapping the pic, then yes, that’s a whole 'nother ballgame. Generally you need to be far enough away so you can zoom in - that keeps perspective distortion to a minimum. You need to be more or less centered on the middle of the barrel, both vertically and horizontally. Whatever is closest to the lens will appear larger than it really is. If you’re standing too close to the head, whether that is because you are laterally too close, or the horse is not perpendicular to your line of shooting (ie hind end swung away a bit), the front end will look bigger than it is, and the hind end smaller. If you’re shooting down on the horse, the body will be bigger and the legs shorter.
It’s also true that these examples are beautiful horses in peak condition with excellent confirmation and sleek summer coats.
Sometimes you stand a nice enough horse up like this and he looks terrible, because the pose does in fact honestly display his skinny neck or hunters bump or downhill build. That is still a high quality conformation shot, just not so useful for your sales ad!
Sales ads or not, they’re just showing the right positioning of the horse, and mostly good backgrounds that make it easy to see outlines properly.
Learning to actually take those kinds of pictures requires just doing it - take them and see what you see. If it’s not at all like the horse you’re actually looking at, then you know you did something wrong.
This is a poor setup (though nice picture) to judge what might be a very nice horse
https://www.twhbea.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/AStrongNeedForCash.jpg
And this is a pretty good setup and photo to judge what is not a very functionally conformed horse
http://www.jolicopainthorse.com/ANGLAIS/Te%20Coolest%20int.1.jpg
Yes, there is an honesty to the straight up conformation shot that is really valuable in assessment. The goofiest built grade horse or fugly mustang can look “pretty” if you video it puffed up and snorting or running in a field of daisies.
I have actually been taking summer conformation shots of my horse annually to track her muscle development. You can see things in a good photo that aren’t always evident in real life where weight and muscle changes are gradual.
I have quite a few examples on my website. My husband takes most of them and I usually make him take 200+ photos to get “the” photo. My directions are that I want him standing back about 50 feet and on level ground with the horse at a perfectly side-on angle. I set the horse up so all 4 legs are showing (it looks really weird when a leg “hides” behind another leg) and then I want to the horse to be looking down.
You’ll have to scroll down closer to the bottom of the page, but I loved this conformation photo of this mare.
Scroll down to the second photo here: if I could nitpick, I wish that his front legs were switched in position (like the horse above), but this photo was, IMO, more representative of the horse in other ways than the ones where the legs were where I wanted them.
I also really liked this one of my chestnut gelding, taken with an iphone in a two-shot “session.”
This one of one of my current mares (scroll 6 photos down) fits most of my parameters for a good shot, but the lighting was off, making it not nearly as flattering as my usual requirement for website shots. But it does give a good view of how she’s built, so it’s still up, though a new confo shot of her is due as soon as we get to better weather for a prettier background.
I agree with JB that there is very little leeway when it comes to a good conformation shot. And though slightly breed dependent, it’s still pretty much the same recipe.
Well it helps if the horses are Absolutely Gorgeous to start with!!!
I have a gorgeous horse that is skilled at looking not so nice in pictures!
Agree. For the traditional “open stance” conformation photo, I believe that the Thoroughbred photos taken by the industry’s best photographers are the gold standard. It comes from a long tradition, and was carried into the modern era by photographers like the late, great Tony Leonard. Current Thoroughbred photographers like Barbara Livingston and Louise Reinagel carry on the tradition and create virtually flawless conformation work.
As mentioned above, it takes a trained eye, a skilled horse handling team, and a cooperative horse. If you look at the stallion roster photos at the top Thoroughbred farms in the country, the photos are taken so skillfully that they are very uniform in presentation and you can really concentrate on the horse as an individual.
Ha ha. Thanks for sharing your ‘airs above ground’ series.
Yes love these pictures!
Procrastinating so I made a few graphics: 
[IMG2=JSON]{“data-align”:“none”,“data-size”:“full”,“width”:“700”,“src”:"http://i67.tinypic.com/o859pf.jpg)
High Priority Tips:
These are awesome outtakes!! :lol: :lol: :lol:
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