Hargate Hill Equine Centre Photography | Hargate Hill, Glossop, Derbyshire

I wasn’t here in any official capacity, my kids wanted to see Eddy…Eddy the horse, correction my daughter Isabella did, Jacob the boy is shit scared of horses, so he really didn’t want to go, hey ho, he had no choice in the matter his 8 year old sister had decided we were going to see Eddy, so we did. Jacob was somewhat pacified by the promise of a packet of cheese and onion crisps from the cafe so off we headed.

I took my camera along as I usually do and rather than just sticking to my usual Fuji 18mm and decided to bring along an old Russian lens that had been knocking around the house as a paperweight for long enough. The lens in question was the Cyclop 85mm, a stupid purchase made ages ago, it’s actually the glass element from a 1953 Russian night vision scope chopped in half and fiddled with to make a camera lens, with a fixed aperture of 1.2 and weighing as much as a small child or big bag of potatoes and photographically is just as useful, it flares like a hippy in any kind of light, is a complete arse to focus thanks to the 1.2 aperture and certainly on anything remotely moving…like a 2 tonne four legged animal moving at 30mph, I mean what kind of idiot would bring it along? Anyway I like trying new things out when I’m not being paid to, so with one rather excited kid on one arm still high as kite from Christmas chocolate and another terrified one repeating “cheese & onion crisps cheese & onion crisps” over and over again like some kind of holy protection spell on the other we set off like the cast from the wizard of OZ, except only one of us was skipping.

EQUINE STREET PHOTOGRAPHER IN GLOSSOP, DERBYSHIRE

I’ve never really made a point of photographing horses, I mean I’ve probably taken pictures of horses before just because they happened to be in the pictures I was taking but never really studied them per se… three things I realised after 15 minutes were : Just how bloody big they are close up, they’ll happily walk through you if you don’t move out of the way and they’re very observant - as a candid photographer they’re very much like little kids who always seem to be looking at you with mild amusement, every time I turned around there was a horse there, looking at me, some were even smiling I’d swear they were - like they loved having their picture taken!

It was an interesting exercise, I’ve decided I like horses, they each have their own personalities and quirks - some are simply curious, some a bit cheeky and some are just out and out arseholes, they’re very much like people.

Anyway, pictures of people and horses coming up below, I’ll do it again at some point without the kids in tow so I can concentrate for bursts longer than 4 seconds at a time.

*Tip - if you click on the first image you get to see them in all their hi-resolution glory (they look bigger and better)