About the Photographer

Karen Wegehenkel has been depicting horses practically her whole life. She started in early childhood with drawing and painting horses, moving on to a camera in her teens. After that it was taking pictures at shows or horse events and during horseback riding. In 2005, when she decided to volunteer for a private barn, she started to pursue horse photography more seriously, taking shots of all the horses there repeatedly, and since then is working on her own style.

Even though she has not studied photography per se, she has a background in fine art, was member of a photographers club for a couple of years (which included hours and hours in the dark room), and took classes in photography at the Bellevue Community College.

Karen has been riding for 17 years, starting with German style dressage. She has always been awed by baroque horses and the airs above the ground, and likes taking photos of the classical breeds the most. Now she owns a beautiful Trakehner-Arabian mare and rides her just for pleasure in classical dressage.

Karen is using available light as much as she can; she strongly disagrees of using a camera mounted flash, since that makes the subject in the photograph look flat and boring. The best light for horse photography is a cloudy sky, or the late afternoon sun. She thinks that the afternoon is the best time to shoot farm call photos, just because a) the light gets better with the minute and b) there is enough time to prepare the horse and surroundings beforehand. And it is a lot easier to get helpers out in the afternoon hours then the early morning.