Is there anything better than being able to create amazing, life long memories for one of your best friends, her heart horse, and her bouncy pupperino? (I’ll wait)

Ez and her gorgeous solid chestnut paint mare Lexi (great name, I know) have been a partnership for over 12 years now, competing in everything from show hunters to jumping to now elementary dressage! Ez’s family portrait wouldn’t be complete without her beautiful Koolie pup, Penny, of course, so she had to get in on the action.

We had a lot to get through, so Ez’s session actually happened over three separate dates!

We started with her black background session at her parents’ home in the picturesque Hartley, while I was up the mountains anyway for Amanda, Beau & Sal’s photo session.

We made use of Ez’s parents’ two car garage for the black background location. (When I say I’m versatile, I mean it!)

Lexi loved my mirror (one of my favourite ear-getters) and posed like a true professional.

With Lexi’s pretty face, it was hard to restrain myself from going wild with the headshots! Finally, we just had to get Penny in some of these. She was a little too keen to get close to the big dog, so we had to keep them quite distanced for the actual moment, but with a bit of photoshop magic, you’d never know!

I came back the next week for Ez’s horse & rider session. We started out with some overcast conditions, but that wasn’t going to stop me!

We started out on the driveway, with Ez in a gorgeous purple formal gown. Purple is Ez and Lexi’s trademark matchy matchy colour, so it was only natural that they had to include it somehow! Lexi was so obliging, giving her mum lots of cute sniffs and wondering what in the world she was doing sitting on the floor like that?

We then had a quick wardobe change into a more casual look. The sun was moving quickly so we scurried around to the backyard and set up on a lovely little bench and brought in everyone’s favourite – Penny! With both a horse and a dog in the shoot, the help of my client-turned-friend-turned-assistant Emma was invaluable. It took a bit of wrangling, but we managed to get some gorgeous shots where everyone was looking in the right direction (and a bit of photoshop magic helped for when they weren’t). Penny thought she should be the star of the show, so I made sure to snap a few of her solo so she could be the centre piece as well!

We switched Lexi into the naked halter for some liberty shots with Penny. She was getting pretty tired of this whole kerfuffle by now, so we had to bust out the big guns, also known as the horse sounds app. A few fake whinnies woke her right up! She was rewarded for her patience with a well earned feed and we retired to Ez’s house for pizza ahead of the second part of the session the next morning.

We were up bright and early the next day to take advantage of Hartley’s famous morning mist. Ez braved the bareback-wedgie to hop on and put Lexi through her paces. In a stunning, flowing gown, of course! Despite one small blip where Lexi got a little too enthusiastic about the jumping (see the 2022 blooper reel for that!), I captured some magical shots.

Because I’m a perfectionist, I then did a background swap with a test shot I’d taken earlier in a different part of the yard, and set the jumping duo against the misty mountains.

Dog portraits for the horse lover

For the final part of our session, Ez headed down the mountain to meet up with me locally, at Windsor, for a stunning Autumn session with Penny-roo. (Hard to believe that this location was thoroughly underwater just eight weeks later in the floods!)

We started with some solo Penny portraits on the crunchy leaves (these were great to fun to play with). Penny was born to model and gave my horse ear-getters the canine tick of approval. Penny’s recall isn’t totally solid, but keeping her on leash and just editing it out in photoshop was easy as pie!

Ez then got in some memories with her beloved girl, and it was the perfect chance to get close and cuddly. Just like with my equine photographs, I made it my priority to immortalise those intimate, connected moments – they’re what sets my soul alight, and hopefully yours, too!

We finished up by driving to a local fenced park where we had some room to give Penny a good (supervised) run.

I loved my venture into canine photography, and think I’d happily do it again – especially when it’s for a fellow horse lover!

The artwork:

HSP sessions are all about the artwork – so it wouldn’t be right to give it a miss!

Ez sent me pictures of her walls which helped bring her vision to life. Check out the artwork we settled on below!

The big reveal…

I was able to give Ez her album in person and film her reaction! Penny loved getting involved too. Check out the reveal video here!

Check out more memories from their session below:

There you have it!
I must say I seriously fell victim to over-shooting for this session, but with moments like as a result, I think it was worth it!

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