(As always, click on the photo for a larger view).
Michaelanne is a co-worker and friend of mine at Weaver Multimedia Group. Twice we’ve volunteered together with the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, doing trail-building weekends with a group of colleagues on Mount Evans and Pyramid Peak, two 14,000-foot peaks in the Rockies west of Denver. It was on those trips that we really got to know each other as friends, and a few weeks ago we got to talking about photography (I was shooting the Greenlight Guide Launch Party and I don’t think she realized how into photography I was).
So she volunteered to model, especially since she has a five-year anniversary coming up with her husband Ben and was working on a collage as a gift. As a surprise, she wanted photos of her riding her horse, Cheerio, something she just doesn’t have.
So we set off after work last Wednesday to scout the stable and riding course offered at 5280 Equestrian where she gets to ride Cheerio a few times per week. A little pre-scout goes a long way, and it allowed us to discuss what she wanted out of the shoot. For sure, an action sequence of her and Cheerio jumping. No problem. The Canon 40D has a wicked motor drive. Portraits, perhaps bareback…maybe barefoot. Those sounded good first thing in the morning, and backlit. From this we came up with a loose schedule, and agreed to meet on Friday morning at 6am.
Cheerio, of course, is an animal, which I seemed to forget going into this. Oh yeah, animals don’t always cooperate. They walk out of the frame (tough for someone who loves fixed prime lenses like me), they keep their eyes closed, they do weird things with their ears, and they slobber at inopportune times. All of this made me a bit tense, which in turn made Cheerio tense (they sense fear!) and Mikey a bit tense, too. So we slowed things down. She sat on the fence, I put on a wider lens, and then it started to flow.
Then it was time to suit up and do some jumps.
Here’s a collage I posted on Flickr last weekend (click on the photo, it is best seen large). Kind of a flip book of the sequence. Cheerio is a freaking huge horse.
[...] Saturday, my friend Michaelanne and I got to watch the Rocky Mountains hibernate. It was one of the more memorable hikes I’ve [...]
[...] The Stone’s — Ryan, Suzy, Tyler and Andrew — are good friends with my friends Ben and Michaelanne Dehner, and Suzy was interested in a shoot after seeing my photos of Mikey with her horse Cheerio. [...]
[...] Individual portraits of you for your spouse. We can work on a theme or a setting that is right for you. You don’t have to wear a Santa hat necessarily (or sport a tinsel fu man choo — who does such a thing anyway?), but a Christmas tree in the background makes for a lovely effect. To see part of my portfolio of individual portraits, visit my website and click on Mikey + Cheerio. [...]
[...] Dehner – Photo Shoot #1 Michaelanne Dehner does it all: she rides show horses, she runs marathons, she climbs mountains, she acts and she can sing. And I don’t mean that [...]