It’s not every day that I get to take photos on a subzero day and still feel my fingers and toes at the end of it. But thanks to my friend Elsabeth at Arbor Hill Farm, I could do this shoot for Pro Elite horse feed in a heated barn.

The goal of the photo shoot was to create “fine art” style images of beautiful show horses, focusing on close-ups of body parts and unique angles and crops. The photos needed to be on a dark background and have a dramatic feeling and show off the shine in the horse’s coats. Because it is the dead of winter here, that meant using artificial light. I recently picked up a new kind of video light and it turned out to be the perfect light for this because it was small, but powerful and created very dramatic light. I’ll include a pull-back photo of my setup at the end.