Horse Race on Ice | Blog | Mikko Niemelä - Freelance photographer

As a photographer trying to tell a story with your pictures, you have to make choices. I was on an assignment for Keskisuomalainen covering a horse race on frozen lake. The brief mentioned that the event was held in tribute to a 80-year-old horseman Olli Häggström.
     I turned up and there were horses and sleigs on ice in preparation for the race. I could've shot the first start and head back, since a generic race picture ran in the paper. But I had to see who this Häggström character was.
     After a while I found him in the woods behind a horse trailer. He was there with his horse Minnie Blend, which was quite nervous with other horses nearby. The contrast between this mellow old chap and his snorting black mare was too great not to photograph. Having owned around 70 horses in his lifetime, he really knew how to handle his horse.
    I wish I could've used flash to really bring put Häggström's age and the black fur of the horse, but since the horse was quite startled I dediced to scrap that idea. Later I shot Häggström racing sitting in his hundred-year-plus sleigh.

It's kind of scary and fascinating at the same time when you mix these huge animals with the competitive spirit of men and women. In one start a man got thrown off from his sleigh as his horse decided to head for the woods in middle of the race.
     Later at home as I was going through the pictures I noticed a blotch in couple pictures from a gallop race. At closer inspection it wasn't dirt on the camera's sensor but a flying horseshoe from a galloping horse's hoof! The organizers got really lucky that it flew off just before the spectator area.

(First picture: Canon EOS-5D, 16-35 2.8LII
Race pictures: Canon EOS-1DmarkII, 70-200 2.8L IS w/ 1,4x, really kicked myself for not dragging the 300 2.8 along, the extender really slowed down the focusing)