Meet Sue and her 17 year old gelding, Spirit. Sue was lucky enough to be given a voucher by her daughter, Lauren at Christmas. Angie and I headed over to their lovely little stables on a lovely spring morning! The bluebells were sprinkled around the roots of the trees, on the lawn leading from the back of the house.
Sue has owned Spirit since a yearling: "I have had him since he was a yearling and we have a strong bond and believe me have been through lots together!"
As we were arriving, Sue was just putting the finishing touches together. Spirit was waiting in his stable looking rather handsome, keeping an eye on us as we were shown around our pretty location. With it being Sue's 50th birthday this year, she wanted to mark the ocassion with some natural images of her and Spirit that really capture their relationship.
The shoot began with the pair of them amongst the bluebells - the unusual scattering of white bluebells amongst the purples looked so nice on camera! I'm sure Sue will agree with me, but Spirit was a monkey to get his ears forward! However, it provided us with some great entertainment! Angie was working very hard to get those ears forward.
We tried everything - my goody bag of tricks was quickly declared useless for Spirit - at most managing to get one ear forward at a time! Sue's friend was grabbing leaves and branches from the tree to get his attention whilst Angie was running around waving her arms, jumping and clapping. I so wish I could have filmed what was going on behind me!
Not even the treat bucket being flung around worked, but a short blast of music from a phone seemed to do the trick, as well the odd dog shooting out from the bushes! At one point we even stood alongside a bonfire - the girls picking up bamboo poles and metal sheets to wave at him!
Sue changed in to her second outfit part way through the shoot - we decided to get creative and see how we could work with the low hanging trees dotted around the lawn! Her partner then arrived with their dogs - somehow they all managed to fit in to the car!
After some black background shots in the stables we watched Sue turn the horses out, Spirit was very excited to go out and showed off his exuberant nature that we had been warned about proir to the shoot!
The dogs loved getting involved in the shoot, they all posed beautifully in the bluebells, however 20 week old GSP Otto stole the show and proved to the others how this modelling business should be done!
Thank you so much to Angie for coming along to help and to Sue for having me - I hope you love your pictures and enjoy your holiday!