Now yes, this gets confusing... Meet Katy and her beautiful mare, Kate! Kate is a 27 year old TBxIrish Draught. I first mat Katy when I came to photograph her daughter, Melissa and their dog Darcy - my brother knew Melissa through school.
As I arrived, Katy was just giving Kate a flick over with the brush whilst Melissa got her dinner ready. We thought it would be best for Kate to have a belly full of dinner before we began as she'd been out of her usual routine and stuck inside all day. Yard manager, Jane, had given Kate a bath during the day. Katy laughed and said Kate must think this is the strangest day ever - she lives out with her two field mates, Teg and Cassie, but has spent the day being pampered and even had a leather headcollar on!
Kate doesn't go out competing anymore but she enjoys hacking 3 or so times a week. They're situated right on the edge of some of the best hacking around here so they're very lucky!
It's been years since the pair of them got all scrubbed up, Katy laughed telling me she had to borrow a nice leather headcollar as they don't get "dressed up" anymore!
The shoot began with some black background photographs of Kate both on her own and with their family dog, Darcy. Darcy wasn't quite sure about sitting so close to Kate, so with a little bit of photoshop magic, I put two images togther to create this portrait.
We headed off down the driveway for the next part of the shoot. Kate was rather keen to get out for some grass and poor Katy was suddenly whisked across the car park to the nearest blade of grass! After much laughter, we managed to get everyone positioned on the driveway! Initially, Katy had said she didn't want to be in any of the photographs, as she hates having them taken, but after 16 years together, with very few photographs of them both together, Katy knew she really did want some of them both together!
With plenty of bribery we got Kate's full attention and some lovely photographs of the pair of them together. Melissa has grown up around Kate so she too got involved in some of the photographs.
Before Kate got completely bored of us all, with her main focus on the green stuff all around her, we walked her back down to the field to Teg and Cassie who were very pleased to see her! I took some photographs of all the mares in the field together.