S14E06 | Insights into the world of horse photography
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If the horse world intrigues you.. But you’re not quite sure about offering equine portraits, do not miss this episode with two of the world's most respected equine photographers, Emily Hancock and Hannah Freeland of Training Barn.
We discussed if and how a pet photographer can also offer horse photography but then we went well and truly beyond that. We chatted about marketing and why shooting competitions was the opposite of helpful for Hannah trying to book equine portraits. We chatted safety and horse behavior.
And then in the members half of this interview Emily gave us an insight into the world of creating and selling art in the traditional sense. She also shared her experience working with a marketing firm for both her portraits and her fine art work, as well as how she sells her fine art work to interior designers.
Hannah shared exactly how she books great clients through referrals, and why clients would fly her to the other side of the world and pay £30k+ for portraits.
WHAT WE COVERED:
Can you successfully offer equine photography alongside pet photography or is it it’s own niche?
Why being an equine competition photographer isn’t the type of exposure that helps you grow your business
Safely offering horse portraits
IN THE MEMBERS-ONLY EXTENDED EPISODE
Transitioning from equine portraits to equine art
Hiring a marketing team
Working with an agent for art commissions
How to find 20k clients
How Hannah booked overseas clients
Why clients would pay 30k+ for a photoshoot
MENTIONED LINKS:
Link’s to Emily & Hannah
Education: The Training Barn
Emily: https://emilyhancock.co.uk/
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Emily Hancock
Emily Hancock, UK
Over the past 20 years I created and developed a successful equine photography business, that was innovative, creative, and stood out from the crowd. I was and continue to be one of the leading equine photographers in the country. My business gave me a very nice lifestyle and allowed me to push my creative boundaries day after day. Over the past 10 years I have been building a career in the art world. Exhibiting at world class art fairs and being represented by renowned agents. I have sold art globally and within famous circles. My art website is www.emilyhancock.co.uk.
Over the years I have invested hugely in creative, personal, and business development and continue to do so. I have been training equine photographers from concept to accreditation for the past 12 years. I continuously drive my businesses to new levels.
I have been awarded the highest accolade, 2 Fellowships for my fine art equine photography from the British Institute of Professional Photography (BIPP).
Since being involved in training I have received encouragement and accolades from various clients both professional and amateur with regards to my training courses. I feel proud and privileged to be able to pass on my knowledge and experience to other like-minded creative people.""
Hannah Freeland
Hannah Freeland Photography, UK
I have been an established equine photographer for the past 18 years. Having adored, ridden and owned horses since I was 3 it was inevitable that whatever my career path, it would involve these incredible animals.
Over this time, I have built up a very successful and sustainable equine portrait photography business. I’ve had 7 magazine front covers, 100’s of featured and editorial images in print and online for digital campaigns. I’ve been published worldwide, and my client list includes stars like William Fox-Pitt, Mary and Emily King, Harry Meade and many more.
My private commissions hire me for luxury photoshoot experiences, beautiful lifestyle portraits and timeless images to cherish as heirlooms. My clients spend between £2,000 – £20,000 and I am regularly flown abroad for private commissions.
I achieved my Associateship with the British Institute of Professional Photographers in 2018 and continue to learn and grow as a creative alongside teaching with Emily to help others achieve what we have.
It’s a privilege to inspire and motivate like-minded people and show them the path to owning and running a successful photography business.
Transcript
If the horse world intrigues you, but you're not quite sure about offering equine portraits, you do not want to miss this episode with two of the world's most respected equine photographers, Emily Hancock and Hannah Freeland of Training Barn. We discussed if and how a pet photographer can also offer horse photography, but then we went well and truly beyond.
We chatted about marketing and why shooting competitions was the opposite of helpful for Hannah, trying to book equine portraits. We chatted safety and horse behavior. Then in the members half of this interview, Emily gave us an insight into the world of creating and selling art in the traditional sense.
She also shared her experience with a marketing firm for both her portraits and her fine artwork, as well as how she sells her fine artwork to interior. Hannah shared exactly how she books great clients through referrals and why clients would fly her to the other side of the world and pay 30,000 pounds for portraits.
I do feel like I'm saying this every week at the moment, but honestly, this is an episode not to be missed. Especially the members half. So if you're not yet a member, get yourself over to the website and join today. The second half of this episode alone is well and truly worth the 10 bucks. That membership will cost you for the month.
Welcome to the Pet Photographer's Club. Tune in as experts share their insights to help grow your business with higher sales, creative marketing, and kick ours business strategies now on to the show.
Hello, and welcome back to the Pet Photographers Club. I'm your host Kirsty McConnell, and today I've got two equestrian or equine photographers With us today, Hannah Freeland and Emily Hancock of the Training Barn. Welcome to the Club Girls. Hi. Thank you for having us. Yeah, hello. Thank you very much.
Awesome. We were having a bit of a laugh before I press record that it's gonna be a bit of a challenge for you all the listeners to and myself actually to work out who's speaking . Two similar accents, but I think we're gonna cope . So maybe the two of you might be better off giving a little intro into who you both are, what the training bar is all about, and how you.
Working together on on this train education. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. So, hi, I'm Emily Hancock and I've been an equestrian photographer and artist for 20 ish years, something like that. And I for. 10 years or so did lots of commissions and private commissions, event photography, weddings, portrait.
And then when I got my fellowship with the British Institute of Professional Photography, lots of photographers wanted to learn from me and know how I was creating the business I had. And so I set up the training barn and I started off with just sort of one-to-one. Clients who would come to my studio and I'd work on their businesses with them.
And then Hannah, in fact, was one of those people, , who her a very good friend of hers actually bought her a whole year's mentorship with me. And so, I worked closely with Hannah over that year and we transformed her business together and then maybe a couple of years later, I think it was had a very random telephone conversation with Hannah, where suddenly I'd sort of told her.
If she wanted half of the training barn , if she'd do my website for me we could work together. So, and then the last sort of seven or eight years, is it something like that? Mm-hmm. We've been working training photographers to create successful equine photography businesses together. And yeah, that's, that's pretty much where.
Yeah, I think I came in as a bit of a proof of the pudding concept. So as Emily said, I joined her for a one-to-one for a year and came from zero confidence and probably zero belief in that you can create this. Wonderful equine portrait photographer's life. You don't need huge amounts of investment in backing.
You can actually start on absolute zero. And in my case it was minus , a couple of pounds, and you just have to get your head down and, and work hard. And so once we had transformed my business and it was, you know, flourishing, it was a no-brainer to come in and help others, which is why Emily and I run the training bond together because we want as many people as possible to know that.
you can have this wonderful equine photographer's life as. . Mm-hmm. . Beautiful. Wow. That's such a nice story. I mean, I would not have guessed that that's the, you know, went from like a student to student to Yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure. Emily was totally convinced at the start that half the business was just going.
I think I convinced her that that was the agreement and that's just one happened . But yeah, neither, oh, hopefully, I can say for both of us, neither of us have looked back and, and it's a very, very fulfilling. Work alongside the ability to be creative through our own businesses, which is the perfect combination really.
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Actually, on that note I know Emily, your focus now is really on selling. Art, and we're gonna get into that in a moment. Yeah. And Hannah, yours, you are still creating equine portraits. Yes. Horse and rider portraits as well. Yes. As well. So what is kind of the breakdown, if you don't mind sharing with the audience for each of you individually, between like percentage of income that comes from training and how much is coming from shooting for you?
Hannah and and your art for you. Sure. So it's always been quite a difficult one. This actually, because there's real ups and downs in as a creative, in a creative industry. There are seasonal you know, we all know that we make. Most of our money sort of may, June, July, August, September time.
And then most photographers go through the winter blues, so to speak, where none of us have saved for our tax bills, , and have a complete meltdown come January. But overall, If, sorry if I understand your question correctly, my income is split up basically 80% selling art and photography, and about 20% is training and that also goes for effort and input.
So probably slightly less actually than 20% training throughout the year. But there or thereabouts. Okay. Right. Well, that's great to hear because sometimes, you know, we. That it's really like 95% training and five Oh wow. Two shooting. So yeah. It's really nice to hear that you're still like we, we, we, Hannah and I, sorry to interrupt.
Hannah and I have always been quite clear that the training barn is a side business. It's not to take over our main businesses that we both run. Yeah. Because we want to be able to do. both really well and give full focus too. But actually during Covid, of course, that percentage did change because we were able to do a lot of online training and hardly any actual physical work.
Mm-hmm. The, the percentages did switch a bit there, but we've been very keen to sort of switch back into our normal way of working, which is about 80% Yeah. On our own businesses. Mm-hmm. . Okay. Nice. And Hannah, sorry, that's around the same for you as. Yeah, and I think it's as Emily said, it's more the input and effort.
20% of my revenue certainly comes from the training bum, but I would say 80% that comes from my private commissions is because 80% of my time and effort is going, you know, o onto yards. I, I photograph overseas as well, so, , you know, if I'm photographing out in Dubai, it's not just, you know, jump on a, a plane one shoot and come back.
I'm out for three days and then of course there's another couple of days. So Emily and I tend to stick between one day a, a week for the training barn, be it that we are training in person. or we're working on the training barn and we do have a small team behind us who run the sort of social media and things.
So we are lucky that our time when it is put into the training barn is for our training clients. And then with our businesses, we're obviously doing a lot more of the admin ourselves. Mm-hmm. . Okay, great. So, okay, let's rewind a little bit because I think it was Emily, you mentioned yeah. That you, in the very beginning of your photography career, you were doing everything, including weddings.
Yeah. Was that the same for you as well, Hannah? Yeah, I dipped my toe into pretty much everything and the, the biggest thing I found, because I did a lot of eventing and I worked on a one-to-one basis with riders to do the behind the scenes and what I kind of figured out after doing weddings, christenings families.
Or lesser with families, but, and then the eventing was that I don't like it if I'm not in control. , . So if, if they don't jump across country, jump in the way I wanted them to jump it I can't ask 'em to do it again because I want a better shot. So I figured out pretty quickly. Same with the wedding. I, I can't control.
everything about a wedding. So I didn't fully enjoy it, and if I'm not fully enjoying it, I, I just won't do my best job. Mm-hmm. , whereas Emily's much more able to create, be creative, even if she's not in full control. Okay. So that leads me to my next question, then I can understand why. specialized, Hannah in particular.
But what about for the listener who's maybe hearing this and they're thinking, okay, well I'm a pet photographer, or I'm a bit of a generalist, you know, I photograph families, pets, maybe sometimes even the occasional wedding. Is there room in a business like that to also be offering equine portrait? Or do you believe this for either of you?
You're welcome to answer this. Mm-hmm. Do you believe that it's really important to be a, a 100% focused niche down into only offering anything related to horses in terms of photography? Yes. So this comes up quite a lot actually with our training barn clients. I think it's completely possible to offer lots of different genres of photography I did for, for many years.
The reason nicheing helps a business potentially be successful a bit quicker is because you are able to put all your energy and effort into one marketing strategy. Whereas when I had, when I was photographing families and horses and weddings, it was essentially running three different businesses. I had to have a marketing strategy to attract wedding clients, which of course, A completely different place from where I needed to get my queen clients and a, again, a different place for where I needed to get my family clients.
So, although it is completely possible and many people enjoy the variety and like working like that both Hannah and I niche down because okay. We love horses. It, you know, the, the businesses were doing well in that area because, Passions lie in that genre. So but it meant that we were able to fully focus a hundred percent of our efforts on getting one specific client instead of three or four, five different versions.
Target markets. Mm-hmm. . And I think the same goes for even if you've kneed down into equine I saw a huge, when I was doing behind the scenes of eventing, I would photograph. Lots of different people and say I'd photograph one high profile rider who has lots of owners, I could never turn that owner into booking me for a portrait photography session.
And it's because I was I'd put myself into a box of. , I'm happy to be stood, you know, on, on an event ground for 12 hours capturing all of this, and then you'll pay me x amount of pounds. But now I want to come to a yard and do a 10th of that time. So I'll stand here for an hour and a half or two hours doing a portrait shoot, but I want you to pay me more money because it's more curated, more creative.
and the, so that market was really difficult to figure out that I had to drop the eventing if I wanted the higher end market of portraiture, or I had to drop the portraiture if I wanted to stay with the behind the scenes of eventing. That's really interesting because I would've assumed that by doing eventing that was basically, You were a walking billboard, you know, it was your marketing for you.
Yes, yes, exactly what I thought for many, many years. And I tried most things and I had the most wonderful clients, you know, knowing my name, you know, great horse owners that were ideal market, target market for portrait photography. But they got to know me as someone who's willing to stand out in the rain, photographing their horse, doing a dress arch test, and ultimately there's always a cap on how much that image can be sold for.
If I'm selling it commercially, then obviously there's a higher ticket. But to the owner of the horse, they're really not gonna look over sort of 15 to 50 pounds, let's say, put a cap in 50 pounds a shot. I mean, and that's being very, very generous. And so it's very hard to take that client into the realms of a portrait client who's then gonna spend a thousand pounds on an.
Mm-hmm. . And yet today your clients, I'm imagining, correct me if I'm wrong, they are competitive writers, aren't they? Yeah, so I mean, I would say we, we probably, again, a bit like The training barn and the businesses? For me personally, I would say I probably have 20%, even less. Actually, probably 10% of my clients are competitive riders.
90% of my clients. Professionally profession, yes. Professionally. 90% of my clients are ladies and gentlemen who keep their horses on the delivery yard or at home who just want beautiful memories. Because it's, as I always say, it's the only insurance we can have against time is. You know, taking those memories and being able to look back on them.
Mm-hmm. . Okay. So, okay, that makes sense. So if I take that client of yours who you said, you know, they're ladies and gentlemen who, you know, have horses at home and they're not, you know, spending all of their energy training all the time for, for competition, that client is, that's a client that I used to photograph horses for as well.
Back when I was. Horses when I was in Australia. So I was primarily a pet photographer, dogs. But I grew up riding and so it made sense for me to also take on the occasional horseshoe every now and again. Yeah. So that's actually your primary client. And so do you have the opposite of what I had and what most bad listens would have where you are being booked because you are the horse expert in terms of photography?
Yeah. You're coming to their stable or, or wherever. , you're photographing the horse there. And are you also including dogs on occasion or, or other animals that they have? Absolutely. I, the more the merrier. So most of my clients will include family members, be it children, husband or wife or partner.
They're dogs. I've had cats. Chickens. Donkeys, llamas, alpacas, turtles, . The, the more you can include actually in the shoots generally plays out in the viewing after, is that they will buy more images and more spend more with you because they've got a bigger variety to pick from and mm-hmm. . So, yeah.
It's, it's always nice when people have extra animals Yeah. That can join the. , Emily and I are always a great believer as well as nurturing our clients. And it's very, very often that you'll be commissioned to photograph, say a lady and, and her horse, and then she calls you back to do a family shoot because they like the way we photograph them and they like the way we make them feel.
So even if you're not advertising yourself as a family photographer, you often find that your existing clients will book you for other types of photography because they like the way you shoot or, or, or the results, or both. Mm-hmm. . . Okay. So that's very interesting. Then I was and this is probably still right, but I was assuming that your clients were, they were booking you because you are the horse expert, which that must be the case, right?
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But then they're still booking you as their dog's photographer, their kids photographer or whatever, even though you're not representing yourself anywhere as the dog. Yes, yes. Yeah, absolutely. But that's because I think when you're on a shoot with someone, you have conversation about their family and who you know what they do, and no doubt a ch child's birthday comes up and you'll go, oh, wouldn't it be lovely to have a photo shoot of all you guys?
You know, so you are kind of dropping seed. Whilst you are making a relationship with that person anyway. Of course, if you want family shoots, but like Hannah says, many of the equine clients are actually very loyal. Clients, you know, for, for many of my equine Clients. I've done christenings, family shoots, weddings the whole lot.
And because I like them and they like me, then it makes sense and they know that I can do it because at some point in the relationship I've said, oh yeah, I used to be a wedding photographer. Yeah, for 10 years I loved it, but you know, it was time for me to, to move on or whatever. And they go, oh, she's getting married next year.
Do you think , they're doing it for us. You know the, and then you have a choice, don't you? So I think also the fact that Emily and I have both. Done weddings and we've both done indoor eventing as well as outdoor eventing. We've really pushed ourselves against all the elements that are tough to photograph in.
So you are, you know, you have no control over an event. You dunno where everyone is at all times. It could be low light situations like indoor show jumping. The same with the wedding. So when it comes to, could you just also photograph my dog, we've kind of done all the hard bits and then we've niche down into what we feel is the easy bit.
And it's the easy bit because we enjoy it. So for someone who wouldn't enjoy portrait photography but they do enjoy eventing, they'd find the eventing much easier and much more enjoyable. So we always stick to the things we enjoy because we're better at. . Mm-hmm. . Okay, that makes sense. So let me flip it upside down.
Now, this example, so most of our listeners are primarily dog photographers. Mm-hmm. , some also do cats or whatever, but primarily we're dog photographers in this community. Mm-hmm. and some people have experience working with horses as. and some, none at all. Mm-hmm. , is it still possible for a dog photographer to start out of nowhere?
Marketing, horse photography or equine sessions, whatever you wanna call them? Mm-hmm. And to do it safely? Yes. Yes, absolutely. . If they want to, of course. I think. . What's most important is to learn the basics of horse behavior, horsemanship, and you can do that online, of course, probably YouTube will tell you everything you need to know in terms of safety.
But I would suggest that probably most of your community at some time or other have had a connection with someone that owns a horse, be it one of your. Photography clients or a friend, friend of the family, someone loosely linked to your, your current network. And my suggestion would be to contact those people that have any connection with horses and go and speak to them.
Particularly if you've had absolutely no horse experience whatsoever. Go speak to. go visit their yard, start to understand safety aspects of, of working with horses and horse behavior. And then go, go from there. So yeah, it's, it is definitely possible, but you do have to do a little bit of, I, I suppose, It's probably not quite the same as going from photographing a dog to a child, because I'd say they're kind of similar.
Yeah. You know, in terms of Yeah. , difficult photograph, all over the place, whereas horses with them being, you know, five ton beasts or however heavy they are, they're, they're very heavy. Yeah. That there is a safety aspect, mm-hmm. , but, but much like photographing newborn babies, you would have to go and do your research.
Learn and get the knowledge about posing a newborn baby as much as the safety around horses. And I think if you have the ability to have a look on something like Pinterest or Google images, you need to assess how people are posing horses with dogs. And there's, and really look at the image and there's a reason why they've put the dog, you know, the other side of the human, of the owner rather than you.
You learn so much having the experience. So Emily and I know that most dogs will not turn their back on a horse because to a dog that's unsafe. So a lot of photographers will come into a situation and say, can you just turn your dog around and get him to sit in front of the horse? And you are constantly trying to push the the dog's bottom down because.
The dog knows that's unsafe. It's, you know, it can't see behind it while it's sat there. So if you analyze a gallery of images that you've pulled up that you like, you'll start realizing that there's a stable in between the dog and the horse or a human, or the dogs the other side. So it's that sort of thing that you need to have knowledge.
Yeah, knowledge. . Mm-hmm. , that's a really good example actually. And I loved your answers to that question. It's exactly how I would answer if somebody asked me, I've never had a pet dog before. I don't know anything about dogs, can I start photographing dogs? ? Yeah. My answer would be exactly the same. Yes.
But you have to learn animal behavior, dog behavior, that's, you know, not that hard. But you have to put the, put the time in and then. Start by practice and it's exactly what you have to do with any genre as you gave it. The example as well with newborns, super important too. I'm always terrified when I hear somebody is starting with newborns and they don't know anything about them like myself, I don't know anything about them.
Yeah. So yeah, really good to hear you guys saying that as well. And also encouraging to the, the listener. You know, has seen beautiful horse portraits like the, the both of you create and are inspired in wanting to do it, but are a bit intimidated. To hear you guys say that is is great that, you know, they, they can get into it if they want to.
Now I have so much more that I wanna ask you both, but I think women save it for the second half of this interview. For members only, because otherwise I am gonna be keeping you all day. But I know, like Hannah, you've got clients that spend up to like 20,000 pounds. And so certainly I wanna get into that.
Emily, your focus these days is on selling art, and I really wanna talk to you about that because I know you're working with yeah. With agents about that. So let's save that for the second half of this interview. But before we do that and we wrap up part one maybe either of you can just give the listener a bit of an idea.
What the training barn offers, how it is that, yeah. The best place that we can go to find out more about. Sure. So we've obviously got a website, ww dot train barn.co uk. Our main goal is to help people be successful, give them a blueprint, give them an action plan to get them to a point in their business where, They can either pay their mortgage, they can pay all their bills, they can become full-time photographers if they want to.
We have worked with lots of people who want it as a part-time job. So really we've got a lot of skill in. Obviously we can do the photography. That's kind of a given. We've spent many years honing our craft there. But what people really, really gain from us is the business know. Most creative struggle with the business side, marketing themselves, knowing how and why and where to market, and how to get those clients that will actually pay you a decent enough rate that you are a, actually able to sustain your own business and pay your mortgage and, you know, go on holidays and stuff.
So we really focus on that in the training barn so that we're able to help people create their own successful. At Coin Businesses and we do, we have online courses as well as in-person courses. So we have loads of people from all over the world who learn. So it's not necessary. You have to be from the uk our marketing plans and photography plans work whether you are in America or France or Germany or England.
And there are so many more horse owners out there than there are horse photographers that we are only just scratching the surface. And so we. Lots and lots and lots more of you guys to connect with us so that we can show you a little bit of how wonderful this life is. A and just one last thing to say.
I, I think the reason so many people connect with our training is because we are very, very open and transparent. You know, no question is silly. We will answer it absolutely, honestly, and we will give all the examples we possibly can about both Hannah and i's 20 year journeys. You know, the photography business, all the highs, all the lows, and it's important to us.
We want to send people away from the training barn, highly motivated with an action plan that if they implement, is gonna get them real results. So Yeah, that's, that's kind of us . Absolutely. Awesome. , I'll put the links to the training barn as well as your each of your photography websites as well in the show notes.
So if you guys listening missed you know, the link or whatever, don't stress, I've got all the notes for you in the show notes. You can just head over to the pet photographers club.com/the podcast and this will. Season 14, episode six. So you can type in 1 46 to find that one. That's it for part one of the episode, but if you are a member of the club, of course you can continue listening to part two in the member Zone or via your private r s s feed in your favorite podcast player.
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