Well this is the first of a long line of shoots I'll be doing on these horses. We board our own horse at a ranch that is a rescue for PMU horses. Most of the horses, well all of the horses in the pictures above are available for adoption, after being saved from slaughter and RE-trained. I've agreed to start providing photographs for their website to help out. So you'll be seeing more of these later.

I do have one question about your comment on vertical lines though. Is it more important to have the barn appear to be standing straight up, or the horse? Because if you make the barn wall vertical, the horse would appear to be leaning. In this particular photo, I was focusing on the horse and rider so I only paid attention to making sure they appeared vertical.

And its funny that you say I should get in tighter and show more of the horse. In most of my stuff I tend to shoot VERY tight. Its very evident in my dog pictures on my blog. However I have been studying other photographers work intensively lately and noticed that there is a big trend in the 'looser' shots that include a lot of background and surroundings. Although, as you mention, those backgrounds are a lot more colorful than our very bland Texas pastures. So I've been trying to develop a more diverse 'eye' than my normal, very tightly cropped one.

Thanks for the comment and tips! I am greatly enjoying this forum, as I've not been able to get the same kind of information elsewhere.