When preparing to photograph wild horses, keeping your hopes high and your expectations low is important. Wild horses go where they want, when they want, and as photographers, we can only hope to find them in beautiful or interesting places.

Last year, when I went to Iceland, I made a dear friend named Susan Gouge. She lives in Arizona and frequently photographs the Salt River wild horses in the Tonto National Forest, just outside of Phoenix. When I knew I would be in the area for the American Horse Publications conference, I asked if Susan would take me to photograph her beloved herds, and she graciously said, “Yes!”

I’ve been to this area before and even made a YouTube video about it and had a spread in Horse Illustrated with my photos from that trip, but I’ve never photographed the herd in the river, so my hope was high that we would get to photograph them there.

Arizona is HOT in June, so the horses can easily be found in the forests near the river, seeking shade and a soft place to rest. There are many interactions between stallions. Some are for play and practice, and some are for real! These horses are comfortable with humans because they are a popular herd to photograph, so we had to be careful not to get caught up in the action.