A friend asked me yesterday who my favorite photographer of farrier subjects was, and I couldn't answer. I've been thinking about it ever since. My friend is an aspiring photographer who wants to capture the world of farriery right down to its most intimate gestures of tongs or rasp or nipper.
I guess my answer is that I'm just incredibly curious how people take pictures of the horse's hoof and, secondarily, its attendant humans and environment. I've looked at probably millions of photos and I am just amazed when I keep seeing a point of view or a subject that I hadn't seen covered before. The possibilities are endless.
Take, for instance, this self-portrait of British farrier Gary Huston. He put the camera on the ground at the base of his hoofstand and got an ant's eye view of the horseshoer at work. His face is distorted, but that's gravity and focal length at work.
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These are just a couple of shots that come to mind for me; it's all about how you look at things, and how/when/if that little crack of light sneaks in and lights things up. I think a good photographer always knows that there is a crack where some light will get in, in every good shot. That's where they start, and build the photo around the light, which might be just a speck...or the whole side of a horse.
I don't think that there could be a more interesting subject to photograph than horses' feet, farriers, veterinarians and all the barns and driveways and dark smithies and brightly lit clinics each present special challenges. When you get a really good image, you know you've earned it.
Many thanks to Gary, Daniele and Sarah for allowing their images to be shown on this blog.
PS: Farriers might be curious about the weird inner rim on Gary's shoe in the first image. I certainly was. It's not part of the shoe, it's the base of his hoofstand. He uses this plate (above) which he says is cut out to fit the size frog of most of the horses he shoes, and when the horse puts his foot on the plate, it locks in for Gary to rasp away on or clinch. Here's the plate all by itself; Gary took this photo just to explain it to me because I was a little slow to catch on to the concept.
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