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During the Von Wong Does Europe tour, I had the opportunity to meet Para-Equestrian Olympic athelete Natasha Baker. What this means for us north-american folks is that she basically rides horses in an aesthetic way. Now while riding a horse in a pretty way may not sound all that impressive, I challenge any one of you to be able to control a horse's every movement so that each move comes off as controlled and elegant! And if you're still not impressed, try controlling a horse without using a single muscle from the waist down.

Beyond achieving that amazing feat, Natasha also happens to be an extremely happy individual... not just in appearance but genuinely so. Now I haven't had much contact with many handicapped individuals but I had assumed (clearly wrongly) that handicapped individuals would experience some sort of discomfort at being different from the world. Natasha though transforms her handicap into a wonderful blessing!!

Erwan and I are working on putting together the BTS videos for these shoots and you'll get the opportunity to hear what she has to say about her and her riding... it's wonderfully inspiring and it's sure to get you inspired and excited. If you're intereseted, be sure to subscribe to our Youtube channel!

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On a more technical note, these shots were taken in bright daylight and we had to overpower the sun using a 500Watt flash from Linkstar supplied to us by Lovinpix.com as well as a second 500Watt flash on loan to us by horse photographer Dan Foz Foster. In addition, we threw in multiple small flashes as kicker lights.

The idea was to overpower the sun and create a nice calm image that Natsha could use as a potential banner on her website. Something casual.. beautiful.. and natural.

For those interested, check out the lighting diagrams (There are two shots because this shot is actually a composite! It would have been impossible to get these two horses to behave on the same field!)

img.skitch.com/20120623-qd48r8w3q5nmaerhmqysx79nt3.jpg

We'll be doing our own Behind the Scenes both short (for the SLRLounge) and long (for our DVD backers) on how the scene was created, lit and more... ! Be sure to check back :)

Thanks to horse photographer Daniel Foster for setting us up

Setup light diagram provided by Sylights.com.

Our tour is sponsored by: www.slrlounge.com/
Studio Equipment/lighting/equipment sponsored by: www.lovinpix.com