Figure 1 – Palmetto Carriage Horse, Charleston, SC, (c) DE Wolf 2014.

I actually learned an important lesson about photographing horses while I was in Charleston last week.  I have tried to take pictures of horses over the years and the results have never been very successful in my view – something was lacking.

Charleston has these horse drawn carriages and wagons that ferry people on historic tours of the city.  I apologize to all you romantics out there.  But this does not look like a happy situation to me – that is from an equine perspective.  And I gather that these carriages are just as controversial as the Central Park carriages in New York City.  The bottom line appears to be that either a 2000 pound Palmetto horse or a pair of mules pulls something like thirteen people through town.

I found nothing photogenic about any of this.  We have a carriage pulled by a team of Clydesdales in the Fourth of July parade in our home town, and the horses really appear to be happy and proud of what they are doing.  I’ve snapped away at this; but never got anything that I liked.

Then I came across the very self assured, beautiful, fellow resting in front of the stables shown in Figure 1.  He almost appeared to have a smile on his face, and I took several photographs of him.  As I came around on his side, I realized that he was intently looking at me, following my every move.  He was engaged and for once I liked the end result.  I can contrast what I consider to be a successful image with one I took more head on.  Eye contact and engagement were lost.  The horse loses his persona and becomes an object.

The point is obvious.  Animals are people too, and just as you have to engage with a person to do their portrait justice; so too with horses, and dogs, and cats.  I have a friend Karla Cook, who is wonderful artist and one of her specialties is pet portraits.  I just love these pictures.  I’m guessing that she could have told me this.