We had an amazing time capturing Jess with her beautiful young mare, Fleur, while we were up in London in May.

Jess is based at Natasha Baker’s livery yard in Uxbridge, a fairly urban location, and she bought Fleur, just 6 months ago. This is the first horse Jess has owned outright, and she tells me she is completely over the moon to have her: “I have to keep pinching myself to believe she’s mine! When I went to look at her for the first time, I had convinced myself this wasn’t the horse for me – but she’s so pretty, I just couldn’t resist!” Fleur is a 6 year old Danish Warmblood mare and as you can see, she is just stunning!

Jess tells me she is a pretty chilled out, laid back and happy-go-lucky horse, “she’s quite unusual as a mare, she likes a lot of attention, being groomed and fussed over.”

As we drove to the farm for the shoot, we had noticed a lovely field just up the road –  full of long grass and buttercups – a perfect way to get some natural green and colour into an urban farm setting.

 

On the day of the shoot,  the weather was pretty blustery. Dealing with a younger horse, we always have a lot of latitude – we may be asking them to do all sorts of things they have no experience of and some of these inevitably can be outside of their comfort zone. A horse and owners safety always come first, so while we always try things once, we don’t push our luck – if a horse says no, it says no. We felt Jess coped brilliantly through the shoot – with it being so windy she perhaps wasn’t as relaxed as she normally is, but she still managed to look incredibly gorgeous, we were able to get her into the various spots we chose for the photographs.

We started the shoot with a walk up to the lovely green field up the road, and as you can see, the temptation of the long luscious grass was a bit too much! These photos remind me of a naughty toddler on a shoot with ice cream or chocolate all over his face! What, me??

 

 

Next we headed back to the yard for some stable and dark background shots with Jess and Fleur. We wanted to capture that beautiful head, and also the lovely bond and friendship she already clearly has with Jess. With the help of a few polos, she did brilliantly with this.

 

Finally we did some flash lighting inside the arena.  This meant one of us holding a big light and a softbox up high facing Fleur,  so we were really cautious at first. She took this in her stride brilliantly, and in half an hour. we were happy with the photographs we’d captured – here are a few of the results.

 

I asked Jess what her plans for the future with Fleur “I don’t think she will make an eventer or showjumper” she said, “but I am thinking we can compete in dressage – we’ll try to affiliate her at the end of the year, perhaps”. The duo are currently having lessons with dressage instructor Rob Waine and watch this space folks – these two could be “one to watch” for the future!

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