Hairy Cob

Hairy Cob, originally uploaded by The Puddock.

Over the last year or so, due to owning our own horse, I have become quite experienced in taking equine and equestrian portraits. These tend to be much harder to achieve than other animal based portraits.

Firstly it is rarely that flash or even simple reflectors are able to be used, as these spook the horses and thereby ends the photosession. This means that you are entirely reliant on natural lighting and in getting the horses position in relation to the light just right. There are some days that lend themselves perfectly to this, and some days it is much, much harder.

Secondly horses are large animals and can tend to look awkward or unnatural unless the whole of the animal is shown, however being domesticated and used to human companionship getting them to stay at a reasonable distance can be pretty tricky.
For most horse portraits I tend to use a 75-300mm f2.8 lens, which enables a wide aperture to be used to render the background out of focus.

Red Gerbera

Red Gerbera, originally uploaded by The Puddock.

A few months ago I purchased some radio triggers in order to start taking more strobist type photographs with several flash guns mounted off the camera and fired remotely through diffusers and reflectors.

I don't generally do flowers as a rule. I don't tend to find them all that exciting as a subject, and they are hard to do well. But I had a new flashgun to test and it was raining outside :-)

I take my hat off to anyone who is able to take excellent flower pictures, it's an artform of it's own and it's a lot harder to get decent lighting on a flower than it looks!

Strobist Info: Flash hand held directly above flower - set to half power. Diffused by a piece of paper. Flash triggered remotely by a cactus trigger. Second flash lighting background from below triggered remotely by cactus trigger

Burrowhead

Burrowhead, originally uploaded by The Puddock.

There are times when you are driving along, when suddenly the sky breaks and you know that you have to get somewhere to take a photograph, and get somewhere quickly. This was such an occasion and Burrowhead was the nearest place to capture the sky.

Handheld, Nikon D40, Nikkor 75-300mm @ 75mm. ISO 400

The Underdog

The Underdog, originally uploaded by The Puddock.

I was asked to take some photographs of a Jack Russell puppy the other day. Getting great pictures of peoples pets and animals is a real pleasure, and when the animals are young you get the additional cute factor :-) It is however, much harder than it looks when they are this young as they just want to jump all over you, or eat the camera.

This puppy was probably the smallest that I have ever seen, it was tiny. To emphasis the small size of the pup I wanted to include something that would provide a sense of scale to the image, and a nearby four wheel drive vehicle, provided an excellent backdrop. To further increase the sense of scale and depth of field, I had to lie flat on the floor, which was of great interest and fun to the pup.
I chose to process the image as a monotone to emphasis the dog which was predominantly white and to help separate it from the background.

The image was taken with a Nikon D200, Nikkor 75-300mm and handheld with natural light.

Baillie Photography

Let me start by introducing myself, my name is Dan Baillie and I live near Newton Stewart, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland and I am a photographer.

I developed a keen interest in photography when I was fourteen years old, as I write this I am thirty six. I started with 35mm Praktica MTL5B with an excellent 50mm Tessa lens which my Dad gave me for my birthday. I learnt the basics, burned hundreds of rolls of film and eventually upgraded to Canon EOS 5 autofocus bodies when they were launched.

My Father and I ran a photographic company called Sandringham Photographic and took a variety of postcards pictures, shots to be used on calendars and a selection of weddings.

In 2003 I left my home town of Southend-on-Sea in Essex and moved to the wilds of Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland.

I swapped film for digital in 2007, when I moved from Canon 35mm SLRs to Nikon. Purely because Nikon were producing slightly better cameras at the time, and also offering better deals. Around this time I also started my own photographic business, Baillie Photography, which at the time concentrated on limited edition prints and stock photography. In 2008 I branched out into wedding and portrait photography, and also began to specialise in taking equine portraits and event photographs.