Rayo de Plata, known as Rayo around the barn is a 13 year old Andalusian that lives just outside of College Station at Denali Sport Horses. He is loved by his mom, Diane, and the pair does dressage.

Reyo is incredibly handsome and he knows it. He was a little hesitant about what was happening when I first got to the barn for his portraits, I think being all braided up and groomed to a perfection and then putting a bridle on and walking outside without a saddle tends to make horses question if their human has gone crazy.

We started out with Horse&Rider Portraits with Diane, and even Diane’s husband got involved in the photos. When we first went outside Reyo was cautious about what was happening and very attentive to his Mom, well that was until one of the barn dogs grabbed ahold of my squeaky pig that I use to get the horse’s attention and took off running through the brush… after that Reyo was all ears.

By the time we went inside the barn to do Rayo’s Black Background Portraits at Denali Sport Horses, he was all ears and had figured out how it worked. He was a very quick learner.

Often times people ask me how horses respond to the whole experience of taking photos, and I honestly can say most horses LOVE the experience. They have so much fun getting pampered, and loved on that they eat up the spotlight. Even though, like I said above some of them get a little confused at first, they get over it pretty fast once they realize that their human forgetting the saddle in the barn and wearing a fancy dress means they get lots of snuggles.