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Dengie Photo Shoot

15th June 2009

At the crack of dawn, myself and Katie Williams, Senior Nutritionist made our way to Mike Jackson’s new yard in Cold Aston for a photo shoot with action and animal portrait photographer, Nick Ridley.

Nick is renowned for his ability to work under pressure and produce work that conforms to his clients brief. His experience of dealing with all types of livestock enables him to work both quickly but calmly to ensure that the job gets done with minimal stress to the animals meaning that they look their best in the photos.

Before we met up with Nick we’d given him a brief of the type of photos that we were looking to use on our packaging, adverts and graphics for our stand that we take to shows and events. We were after a combination of action shots both jumping and flatwork, as well as full length portrait shots.

Over a cup of tea, we were introduced to Ellie, Mike’s wife who would also be modelling in the photo shoot. Once introductions were over with and we had briefed Mike and Ellie with the plan for the day it was down to business. We decided to use a mixture of three horses for the shoot, Jack (Jagganath, a bay gelding owned by Carole Mortimer), Thunder (Silver Dancer, a grey thoroughbred owned by Sue Sabin) and Robbie (Robbie Be Good, a stunning chestnut owned by Deborah and Martin Toogood). All three horses were in fantastic condition and were complete naturals in front of the camera.

Whilst Jack and Thunder were being groomed and tacked up Nick observed and seemed to have a secret ability to see the perfect picture in an everyday scene that we would have by-passed oblivious to what we were missing. Next we were off to the menage and Mike and Ellie warmed up the horses while a few jumps were set up for them to pop over. They both made it look effortless and Jack and Thunder took it all in their stride. Afterwards it was a gentle hack down the country lane with the sun shining through the trees before letting the horses release their energy with some galloping shots in the fields.

Whilst having a quick bite to eat, Nick was able to upload the images onto his laptop for everyone to admire before starting all over again with Robbie. The same routine was followed capturing flatwork images in the school and then some action shots of jumping. With Robbie’s handsome looks and fiery mane, Nick captured some excellent shots.

In no time at all, we were finished and packing up so Mike could get back to preparing his horses for their next events. With modern technology it is easy to upload all of the images taken that day straight onto a computer. They can then be viewed back in the office over the internet on the same day – a much improved system compared to having to wait for films to be printed and crossing our fingers that the photographer had caught the perfect image.

Back in the office the next day the Dengie team have the difficult task of going through the hundreds of images one by one to decide which are best suited to promoting our products. When they’re all so good it’s a tough job to decide which ones to use but it’s great fun especially as Mike is pulling funny faces in some of them!


Many thanks again to Mike and Ellie who were brilliant models and hosts and to Nick Ridley for taking some fantastic images.

Donna Newton

May 2009

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