…you’ve long embraced the beauty of streaming
services, so you don’t keep any music downloaded on your phone – instead,
you’ve got a couple of tracks of horses whinnying. Great when you need to get some
errant ears forward on a shoot, less so when you turn your car on and
immediately deafen your passengers with a rather fruity stallion serenade.
…you know that size matters, but how you use it
is more important – that’s lenses, of course.
…in an effort to channel your inner Jon Stroud,
FEI photographer extraordinaire, you’ve spent a whole morning wrapping your
lens hoods in patterned gaffer tape.
…you can’t go to a show without documenting it.
Even after multiple trips to the champagne bar at Olympia, you’ll be
determinedly uploading your blurry iPhone snaps into VSCOcam – you wouldn’t be
caught dead using Instagram’s native filters, after all.
…you have to stop buying fashion magazines after
Vogue commits yet another cardinal sin – this time, an upside-down headcollar.
After an hour of puzzling over it, you still can’t work out how they got it on.
…you think you’re a pretty rational person,
until a muggle – that is, a non-photographer – makes a remark to suggest you
must have a very good camera to produce such good photos. Truly, officer, I
don’t remember a thing – I must have blacked out!
…you find yourself on the receiving end of more
than a few funny looks when, in the middle of family Christmas, you cluck at
your cousin’s kids to try to get them to smile for a photo.
…you’re pretty sure there’s no situation that
baby wipes can’t fix.
…you think nothing of getting on the ground
during a shoot to nail a creative angle. Nothing, that is, until you stop for
fuel on the way home and realise everyone staring at your mud-stained knees
thinks you’ve been up to something quite different.
…you can come up with an outfit worthy of the
Badminton first horse inspection in minutes if a client asks for help, but
whenever you need to look smart? Well, let’s just say you’re happy to borrow
the mane comb from your travelling grooming bag and leave it at that, shall we?
…you’ve saved up for a month to treat yourself
to a custom sequinned camera strap – very on-brand, until you realised that
every horse that spotted it suddenly high-tailed it to the next county. Whoops.
…it takes you three times as long as it used to
to read Horse&Hound, because you’re examining every single photo to figure
out how it was taken, and then checking the credits so you can stalk through
the photographer’s portfolio. Hey, it’s essential research, right?!
…there’s only one gospel you live by: focus for
the highlights.
…you dream of running away to the Sunshine Tour
or the Winter Equestrian Festival to book in five-figure personal photographer
contracts. Your kids can look after themselves for a few weeks, surely?
…a celeb rider likes one of your photos on
Instagram, and you covertly screenshot the notification to look at a few more
times that day – or, um, month.
…you realise that deep down, you chose this
career for one reason: pony cuddles on demand, every day. Bliss.
