Having worked with Brand Potential in the past on several of their advertising campaigns for other equine brands, it was great to hear from them when they wanted to discuss a new project. Only for this shoot we were to have a slightly smaller subject; meet the rather adorable “Moses”.
Moses is a rescue Shetland pony living at the Redwings Horse Sanctuary near Norwich, Norfolk. His mother arrived at the centre in 2004 having been rescued from common land in Lincolnshire and Moses was born shortly after. He now has a rather special role as part of the education team, raising awareness about horse welfare and the work of the charity.
Brand Potential had been tasked by their client Spillers Horse Feeds to revamp one of their existing products, “Happy Hoof”. Spillers have a well recognised brand style on their equine packaging, so it was going to be interesting to try and move this across to a smaller cover star.
The team at Redwings couldn’t have been more helpful and accommodating to my needs to get the studio set up in a spare barn with enough free space for the shoot. As always with my studio type equine shoots, the setting up takes far longer than the actual shoot. However this is time well spent, as Moses could see the set being built and get used to the new surroundings of lights and back drop.
Once he was in place and seemed very relaxed about the situation) as do most horses to be honest) I think the shot was in the bag in less than 20 minutes. One thing that did feel rather strange, was only having to set the black backdrop up to just 4′ high, I certainly didn’t heed to bring the step ladder.
With shoots like this I prefer to shoot tethered to a lap top so the client can see straight away if we’ve got the image they need. Thus is especially useful when there is a tight crop that needs to be factored in and we can see how it looks on the screen. As usual I’m working here with my Profoto lights and modifiers, though all slightly scaled down for this shoot
I can’t thank everyone at Redwings enough for all their hard work, not only with this particular shoot, but also all the work they do to rescue and help our less fortunate equine friends.
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