Fun with “FUG-TOS”

Ok, Today I didn’t do anything with the horses.  It was cold.  Really cold.  And I’m a wuss.  Sadly, with rain in the forecast all MidWest Horse Fair weekend long, I doubt I’ll be doing much with Chewie, Luke, or Dixie, but at least I did get Dixie’s harness fitted to her today and saw where I need to make adjustments to her super-cool pink harness.  Pictures to come.

But, I am looking very very forward to the Horse Fair, just because it’s a fun place to go shop, look at pretty horses, and mill around.  Even if it does rain.  Bummer.

So whilst perusing the MWHF website, I was looking through stallion alley and decided to have a little Fugly style fun with Fugly horse photos.

Now, I am a total amateur photographer.  But I am also a horse person.  As such, I just would expect that a horse person should know what makes a horse look good and not so good in a picture.  Capturing the right moment in a canter stride, for example, can make a horse look uphill, balanced, and active.  While capturing another point in a canter stride can make a horse look downhill, off balance, weak hinded, and basically, fugly.

So, as a horse owner with a breeding stallion that you actually want to charge people money for to breed to, you’d think you want a good picture to advertise him with, right ?  Especially on a website where 50,000 people visit the Fair every year….

Now, here is my stance on breeding of any animal- take it how you like.  Just because you have an intact, reproductively active animal of any gender DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD BREED IT.  I don’t care if we are talking dogs, pigs, or beetles.  There’s too many unwanted animals out there in the world thanks to over population from over breeding.  Especially with horses.  Like the idiot in Montana or where ever that bred 800 QH’s and thought they were all worth a fortune, so he let a couple hundred of them starve to death because he wouldn’t take $200 for them.

If your animal is not a) registered b) proven for it’s particular job – it SHOULD NOT BE BRED.

If you do have a registered and proven animal, you think you’d want to show off it’s best qualities for it’s job, or why it’s a good breeding stallion – like conformation.  Now, you don’t have to be a professional photographer to take a decent stallion photo.  All you really need is an ounce of common sense.

Here’s one of the stallions….

I doubt this is a professional picture.  I’d say this is a picture from an amateur with an ounce of common sense.  This horse has a good stance, shows off his conformation and it’s a nice picture.  No distracting backgrounds.  Only thing would be nice if the horse wasn’t in a rope halter. But, not bad.

Now, if your stallion photo looks like this…..

Maybe you should think long and hard.  Let’s see…  Crappy halter, rusted chain. Someone’s yellow glove tapping the horse’s shoulder.  Horse has grass in his mouth, and I’m pretty sure there’s a dog in the background.  You can’t see the horse’s build at all and this photo depicts absolutely nothing useful about the horse for his job in life.

Bear with me, they get worse.

Fun with Photoshop anyone?  This is a nice picture.  It displays the stallion well. It’s by far not an ideal stallion body shot, but it’s a nice picture and a good quality.  And then the fun with Photoshop is done so heavily it interferes with what the stallion actually looks like.  I can’t concentrate on the horse at all because there’s too much overdone swirlies.  Photoshop can glam up a photo, but it shouldn’t be overdone.

Like this stallion. Pleasing background.  Too much butchering of the legs when they cut the horse, but that’s OK, we understand.    This picture shows off the nice conformation, and since most QH people love to start with the rump, this horse is facing the right direction.  Good stallion image.

Remember, we want our stallion to look pretty, presentable, functionable if he has a job other than breeding mares, and we want the horse to be what the fills your focus when you look at the image…..

I can’t take my eyes off the tee-pees in this.  This is a mustang, and they’re trying to link the horse to it’s American original heritage, I guess, but this is not how a stallion photo should represent your breeding animal.

And, what was I saying about presentable?  No stallion should be photographed in anything other than a clean, good quality leather halter, or riding/driving tack, or with nothing on him. Nylon halter and crummy chain lead rope, and of course, we can’t even bathe our high quality breeding A-rab can we?

Here’s another one.  If you think this image of your paint stallion is a good image to promote your speshul kwality kolored horsie, you should get out of the breeding business.  If you don’t know what a good horse photo should look like, how can you know what a good horse should look like??

Ah, ok… a break from the crappy BYB photos.  Here’s a great stallion picture.  Lightly photoshopped and makes this beautiful QH look lovely.

And another one.  Pleasing background that doesn’t distract.  Actually I love how the background is almost all green, so it makes the horse really stand out.  And you can plainly see the stallion is working successfully at his job.  Driver is well dressed and everything is proper.  These two could have just trotted out of a show ring.

If you can’t afford a leather halter and attractive lead rope, you should not be owning a stallion and trying to breed it.  At least the horse is clean in this image.  He’s standing in a down hill rut, not square, and there’s a really unattractive dead weed thingie in the background that keeps drawing my eye away from the horse.  And is it me, or does this horse look like his feet haven’t been done in six months?

As a breeder, you should know what breed your horse is and what makes that breed stand out conformationally and you should try to show it in your images of your breeding stallion.  Every breed wants different things to be emphasized in their breeding stallion images.  You don’t have to be a pro photographer to display these things either.

I don’t think this is a pro image, but it’s a lovely picture that really displays some of the things people look for in a Arabian’s conformation.  Good shot.  Clean horse. Appropriate headware.  Kudos.  Good job.

Now… I’m not exactly sure which stallion it is we’re supposed to be interested in paying for a breeding to with this image!  Is this studs and stallions calendar, or a horse stallion advertisement?  I’m confused.  And your stallion image shouldn’t look like this.

And finally…. when your frigging Impressive bred QH stallion looks like this…..

…. all I can say is that I’m glad the AQHA has banned registering Impressive bred horses.  Truly, words cannot describe……….

Anyway!  Have a good day!