A new service I am offering to my equine clients is group photo sessions. Several participants share the cost of the session making it more affordable. Each participant gets a 30 minute session, which is enough time to take very nice portraits of them and/or their horse.

This session was at Hackberry Farm, where I boarded my horse Maggie Sue when we were in Kansas City last winter.My first participant was Leslie. She and I became good friends while I was there and she has helped me solve some problems I was having with Maggie Sue. I really enjoyed having the opportunity to photograph her with her horse Kodiak!

•Photo Tip• All photos were taken with a Canon 70-200 2.8 lens at f-stops between 2.8 and 5.0. Longer focal lengths are essential for equine portraits.

•Bonus Photo Tip• The skies were heavy overcast for this session, so I had to work at the limits of my gear to create quality images for these clients. The general rule for minimum shutter speeds is 1/focal length. So with my 70-200 lens, I need to keep my shutter speed around 1/200th when I am zoomed all the way in, and 1/70th when zoomed out. To ensure that I didn’t get motion blur in my photos, my shutter speeds for these photos were between 1/200th and 1/250th.

My next client was Shania, a beautiful arabian mare.

Shania’s owner also owns Ruby. Photographing two horses together is not as easy as it might appear.