APS Behind the Lens: Three way battle

I have had cameras of one sort or another since I was a child, and Shetland ponies have been a part of my life since birth. So getting to combine two of my loves on a regular basis is a privilege.

I am secretary of my local photography club (Whittlesea) and I love taking photos at our local football club games, but my photography journey really started out with horses and ponies. I am a fourth generation horse breeder and in 2025 our stud, Fenwick, celebrates 100 years of breeding Arabian horses and Shetland ponies.

My grandmother was a keen photographer and I have proudly held onto her old cameras as well as the bloodlines of her original ponies. I am also lucky enough to have two of Australia’s best equine photographers as friends and mentors in Nicole Emanuel and Louise Sedgman. These ladies have inspired me to push my equine photography beyond the usual conformation shots required to promote my horses.

The day this photo was taken I had set out to get some standard side-on conformation shots of one of my young stallions. Of course the boys had other ideas. After getting in my face and being too close to shoot anything they decided to chase each other around for a bit and start play fighting as only young boys can.

I can assure you no one was harmed in the making of this photo! I decided to convert this image to black and white as the boys’ coat colours and the green grass were all too distracting. I cloned out the visible fence in the background and increased the detail in the ponies.

A bit of dodging to bring out more details in the darker areas of the ponies’ faces and I felt I had achieved the look I was after.

All editing was done in Luminar Neo. I didn’t manage to get the shot I set out to on that day but I ended up with something much more fun and interesting and totally representative of those three cheeky boys.