Sale photos and videos: how to show your horse properly

What buyers expect to see

Experienced buyers take a small standard set of shots for granted. If one of them is missing, the impression is that something is being kept out of sight.

• Conformation shot, strictly side on. Stood open so all four legs are visible, head slightly forward, ears pricked, camera square to the horse's long axis. This is the picture people study the longest.
• Head portrait. Three-quarters from the front or in half profile, headcollar clean, nostrils and eye sharp. It carries expression and type.
• Movement in all three paces. Walk, trot and canter across the camera, so scope and rhythm can be judged, plus one sequence coming towards you and one going away for straightness.
• Under saddle. What buyers want is uncut footage on a circle or around the whole arena, transitions included. If the horse jumps, add two or three fences in a row.
• Loose work. In the paddock or the indoor school, with nobody chasing it. This shows natural movement and natural energy, which often gets lost in hand.

Everyday moments are a useful extra: mounting, loading, picking out feet.

Making the most of light and time of day

Direct midday sun is the single most common reason sale material ends up unusable. It throws hard shadows under the belly, burns out light areas and turns dark coats into flat black shapes.

Shoot late morning, early evening or under an overcast sky instead. Cloud cover works like an enormous diffuser: the light goes soft, muscle definition stays visible, and greys and blacks both keep their detail. Keep the sun behind you. Shoot into it and your warmblood becomes a silhouette.

Indoors, artificial light pulls everything yellow or green. Use the open door as your light source, or film outside. No flash: it startles the horse and flattens the coat.

Background and footing as silent extras

A background should tell you nothing. Muck heaps, parked lorries, flapping tarpaulins, other horses and bystanders all pull the eye away. Look for a calm surface: a hedge, an even wall, an empty field. Watch for separation too. A dark chestnut in front of a row of conifers disappears, and so does a grey in front of a white wall.

Footing decides how much can actually be judged. In deep sand the hooves sink, the legs look shorter, and pastern angle and hoof shape vanish altogether. For standing shots you want firm, level ground: a freshly levelled arena, a made-up track, short-mown grass. And the horse really does need to be standing level, not slightly uphill or downhill, or the whole set of proportions shifts.

Camera angle and the usual distortions

The most important rule: hold the camera at the horse's shoulder, not at your own eye level. Shot from above, every horse looks shorter in the leg, deeper through the back and generally smaller. Crouch down.

The second classic is standing too close. Up close, a phone's wide angle gives you an enormous head, a narrow hind end and a croup that runs away into the distance. Step back several paces and use the telephoto setting. That gives you natural proportions instead of a caricature.

Other errors that keep coming back:

• Angled from the front rather than exactly side on, which compresses the barrel.
• One leg hiding another, so only three legs are visible.
• The handler in shot, hood up, phone in hand, or standing right in front of the head.
• A lead rope or lunge line hanging across the body.
• Ears or hooves cropped off at the edge of the frame.

Work in pairs: one person stands the horse up, the other shoots. A noise from a distance lifts the ears at the right moment.

Phone or camera and how long a video should run

A current smartphone is perfectly good, as long as you get the distance and the light right. A system camera has the edge on movement because it focuses faster and stays cleaner in low light. But a good phone photo beats a bad camera photo every time.

For video: film landscape, never portrait. Tripod or steady hands, no zooming in and out, and keep the whole horse in frame.

On length, one main video of two to four minutes, with each pace given a few uninterrupted seconds. Cut out the waiting around, but never cut inside a sequence of a pace. Choppy half-second clips make people suspect something is being hidden. Leave the music off: buyers want to hear breathing, hoofbeats and how the horse responds to the aids.

Honesty pays twice over. Edit out a stiff side and you will meet it again at the trial ride, only this time with a disappointed buyer in front of you.

What long-distance buyers need on top

Anyone several hundred kilometres away needs more than the standard package:

• A walk-around, one slow, unbroken circuit of the horse standing still.
• Close-ups of the legs from the front, behind and the side, plus the soles of the feet.
• A size reference, such as a person of known height beside the horse, or a photo with a measuring stick.
• A live video call, where the buyer can ask to see specific things as you go.
• Unedited original files on request. Push contrast and saturation hard and you change coat colour and markings, and you will have to explain yourself later.