September 12th

Tuesday, September 12th, 2017

Today was like a dream.

If you know me, you know that I grew up around horses. I was the two year old girl at the Minnesota Horse Expo that refused to get off the horseback ride. No fear. I’ve always had a big heart for these big animals. The bigger the better, actually.

So what are the largest horses I could have contact with? Draft horses.

I’ve always been fascinated with them. It’s really unfathomable to understand just how big they are until you see an image like this one (below) that has a human for scale.

I love drafts on their own, but driving teams are my true weakness. So today’s shoot was like a dream come true for me.

As many of you know, along with owning A Borrowed Likeness, I also do a fair amount of assisting on commercial and equine portrait sessions with Shelley of Shelley Paulson Photography. She contacted me last week and asked if I had any interest in assisting a shoot for Ames Percherons, we’d be photographing their six horse hitch.

OH MY GOSH YES!

That shoot was this afternoon. Shelley, also a horse lover, was just as excited as I was. We geeked out the entire drive down, and our excitement was peaked when we arrived.

We arrived early, and Travis was gracious enough to let us photograph them getting horses ready and wander and photograph others horses on their beautiful property. His 9 year old daughter, MaKenna, was a wonderful tour guide and walked us around the farm. At one point we were by a group of new theee year olds, and one was drawn to MaKenna.

The largest of the group at over 18.2 hands (that’s over 6 feet tall at the withers (shoulders) for you keeping me track at home!), he was so gentle with her and she was fearless. Take a good look at the image – his muzzle is the size of her head.

“Gentle Giants” was truly the theme of the shoot, and I was captivated by their grace and beauty.

I didn’t think my heart could grow to hold anymore love for the equine species, but tonight proved me wrong.

Shelley caught this image of me, and I LOVE it! Note: This is the same horse in my image with MaKenna!