An Icelandic Horse in the Wild

If you want to see how I made this (and how you can too!), visit my HDR Tutorial. I hope it gives you some new tricks! I consider myself very lucky to have a network of great photographers around the world. I met most of them through Flickr, where we are constantly commenting and giving feedback on one another's photos. This has enabled me to meet up with great photographers wherever I travel, and they are great people to hang out with because they already know the prettiest places around where they live!

One of the people I was lucky to shoot with was Rebekka in Iceland. We met at a coffee shop in Reykjavik and talked about where to go shoot. We jumped in her car and drove a while until we reached a fjord. Nearby were these horses running around like wild beasts. They have no fear of humans, and we were able to go right up to them. Their hair is very long, and I'm sure it evolved from the hyper-cold whipping winds around the edges of the sea.

I don't shoot a lot of animals, because I find it hard to improve upon what other great animal photographers have done in the past. However, here is a tip for shooting animals. It's kind of a lame trick, but it always works. Use a wide-angle lens and get in close. It always makes the head look really big and cute. Humans love big-headed animals and it always makes them smile. Why this is, I have no idea... Note this trick also kinda works with babies.

Seriously, thanks to Rebekka for a great day tooling around the fjords of Iceland.

Oh, and yes.... I have pictures of Rebekka coming up at some point wearing her green-thing ... nothing too salacious for public consumption, I assure you... but in more of a "photographer in her milieu" milieu.

from my daily photo blog at www.stuckincustoms.com