Shelley Paulson, is an equestrian, an award-winning commercial photographer and educator for the past 20 years and recently developed an indispensable digital app to help professionals take high-quality equine images. The app not only gives creative ideas for photography sessions, but it serves as an inspirational resource by preparing photographers to capture the best from horse and human. The Tech Equestrian had a chance to meet Shelley and learn more about this one-of-a-kind solution.

Three of a Kind
“I’m your typical horse girl, growing up riding horses, however I didn't own my own horse until I was 26 and I still have that horse, Maggie Sue. I got her as a two-year-old and she turned 30 this year,” shared Shelley. “About eight years ago, we got our own farm, and I got another horse, Fritzie, who is a paint, and we do dressage together.” To balance out the horse ratio, Shelley purchased a Morgan filly, who is now a two-year-old. The plan is to raise her to be the next dressage pony.

A Photo Journey
“I started photography almost 20 years ago and once the calendar turns 2024, I'll be able to say I've been in the business for 20 years, which makes me ancient compared to most people in the industry,” Shelley laughed. However, she is happy to see how equestrian photography has exploded in the last five years.

When she first attempted to do photography, it was for a corporate job at a very large construction company. The subjects were boring and static – which included taking pictures of freeways. “I would take my little film camera out and it was easy because I only took pictures outside and I had the camera setting on automatic.” As she recalled, back then it was the dawn of the internet and most of the photographs she took were used for company websites. After transitioning to digital she found it was a lot easier that working with film.

“I used an early digital camera, one of the first Canon digital Rebel’s – it was a very basic camera and couldn’t tolerate low light very well. Luckily, it was a faster learning curve for me because I could see right away what I was doing wrong, and I was good at using Photoshop to cover up any mistakes,” she confessed. “My photography career initially started as a wedding photographer because there was a market for that and to break into equine photography was to go shows and I had no interest in standing in a dusty arena for eight hours a day.”

Slipped into Horse Photography
Her focus changed in 2013, when she was traveling, she slipped on a wet concrete floor, and suffered a traumatic brain injury. After a long recovery, Shelley couldn't shoot weddings anymore. This was the turning point for her as she decided to make horse photography a full-time job. “I was doing some equine photography and education including a few workshops here and there.” Her parents instilled in her the gift of teaching – both her parents were college professors, and her mother is also a published author. Teaching was really in her heart. “In 2020, I had this idea to start a mentorship program. It was in January, right before COVID and lockdowns. I had no idea what was coming but it worked out well to have an online, interactive mentorship while we were all stuck in our homes.” The mentorship included an in-person retreat in June of that year. “I had everybody take their temperature every morning and some people wore masks because we were all so afraid back then. I’m happy to say no one got sick and we had a fantastic time together.” 

The first mentorship is called Wings and it's fully online. It includes a review of the camera settings to use and what poses work the best and that morphed into a request to have this information on a smartphone. “Ideally when I'm at a shoot, I could look at it and get ideas on the fly.” During the 2022 mentorship, students asked if there might be a way to make a cheat sheet of things like what camera settings to use and what poses work the best. I initially thought of having physical cards for people to carry around, but I soon realized a mobile app would be even better,” said Shelley.

A sample portfolio of Shelley’s work:

The EquiCapture Composite
“I went to work trying to figure out an economical way to do it because I’m a small business owner and I don’t have the kind of money needed to hire a developer.” Shelley luckily found a website after trialing different ‘build your own app’ sites. “It was easy to get started, all I needed was to have galleries of files and external content.” She ended up choosing MakeOwn.app - the solution makes it easy to build the app through a web interface.

The app launched on May 20th of this year and has a one-time fee of $34.99. “I really wanted to have this out in the world helping people.” EquiCapture is also an extension of her education and mentoring business, and offers great brand exposure and builds loyalty.

Top Features
The app features two posing sections – and provides pictures of different poses. This is ideal for when you are at a photo shoot, and you’ve taken all the traditional poses and think – what else can I do? “It basically is a library of images including ways to pose a person with a horse and ideas for getting them interacting.” Similar to a Pinterest board, this is much more organized and well thought out and it saves you time weeding through all the pictures to get to your posing board. The app also includes posing prompts, things that you can say to your client to get them engaged with their horse. For example, saying to them to look at their horse and think about something that's made them proud just to help the image show more feeling than just a stiff smile. “A fan favorite of the app is it has the sounds of a horses whinny, which is one of the best ways to get horses' ears forward for photos.” This feature runs on a continuous loop that you can pause and play, but there's a few seconds between each whinny.

“I also have a guided meditation I encourage professionals to play before a session to help envision the session going well. I do hear from equine photographers that this type of motivation helps elevate the nerves they get when they show up at a photo shoot.”

What’s Trending
“In equine photography, the trend I'm seeing now and one that kind of makes me sad is that the line between real and very edited is that images look like a fantasy illustration,” she said and continued, “With the advent of AI manipulation, it is opening the door to fake our eyes because we're doing so much to real photos that they don't look real anymore.” Shelley is primarily focused on timeless, traditional photography. She is inspired with the trend of more partnering between photographers and smaller equine businesses. “I’m happy to report that I’m seeing more people are looking for high quality content for their companies - from bridle and saddle manufacturers to boarding facilities or a show jumping team - they’re hiring photographers to create that content for them.”

Future Vision
When asked about the future of horse tech adoption, Shelley answered, “It’s exciting to see that more people are downloading apps, and looking to technology for new ideas on how to care for their horse or ride better. I'm seeing a lot more remote lessons and training apps that are a great way to add to your equestrian education,” she said. She recently did a photo shoot with Equine Network and highlighted their US Rider app – she thought it was genius.

Download the EquiCapture App on the App Store or Google Play

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