Today's Guest: Tom Rowe of Hoof Print Images in West Chester, Pennsylvania
Today's Host: Damien Allen
July 2007
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Tom Rowe Expert PageANNOUNCER: Welcome to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight with your host, Damien Allen.
ANNOUNCER: Today's program is sponsored by morephotos.com the online photo sales solution to professional photographers worldwide.
DAMIEN: Good Afternoon and welcome to the VTalk Radio's Photographer's Spotlight. I'm your host, Damien Allen, in for the vacationing John Bentley, and today via phone we are joined by Mr. Tom Rowe of Hoof Print Images in Westchester, PA. Welcome to the program today, Tom.
TOM: Thanks, Damien, how you doing?
DAMIEN: Not to bad at all, yourself, sir?
TOM: Terrific.
DAMIEN: Tom, I understand you have a thriving equestrian photography business down there; you want to tell us a little bit about it.
TOM: Yes, the company's name is Hoof Print Images, our website is www.hoofprintimages.com. We specialize in equine photography of all phases, all disciplines of equine photography. All types of shows. We do barn shoots. We do chase and endurance events. Just about any type of equine photography you can think of.
DAMIEN: So with the photography of such a large animal that could tend to be a little skittish; how do you approach shooting in a show sense or if someone's got like a private shoot, you know, how do you approach photographing with such a huge, beautiful animal?
TOM: You just have to be really careful. The last thing you want to do is spook the horse. You don't want to surprise it in any way, shape or form. You have to let them know where you are. You can't be hiding behind a fence or out in the field. You can't be hiding so that they can't see you behind a bush or something and then just pop out. They tend not to like that whatsoever. Neither do the riders, obviously. We like to catch them being as natural as we can. We try to catch the excitement of a show, we try to catch candids also at the shows. People just being themselves. We try to catch the entire essence of what is going on at a particular event from the organized activities to, like I said, candids of people just being themselves. Actually, some of those pictures are my favorites. You never know what you might find. A very cute, little child looking over a fence watching the show, or somebody jumping a couple foot high fence. It's very exciting. There's a lot of action, but you also have to know what you're shooting. There are certain things that you're looking for as an equine photographer. Form of the horse, the form of the rider; which is called equitation in the horse world. Equitation is really how the rider looks riding the horse, and the rest is based upon the horse itself. We do all types of disciplines. There's hunters, hunter jumpers, strictly jumpers - which you see a lot on tv, large stadium type jumps, carriage shows, dressage. We also do shoots on chased events which are basically timed or organized trail rides out through the fields of the area in which we live. So, to answer your question, you just have to be very knowledgeable about your subject and what you're looking for and just be very cautious and not to disturb the animal in any way, shape or form.
DAMIEN: Are there a lot of events that you find yourself shooting yearly or venues that you shoot at alot?
TOM: We have a group of shows. We started the company about 3 years ago. I retired about 3 years ago from what I used to do and photography...I've been interested in photography since high school which was, I hate to say how many years ago, but quite a while ago. And so I was at the shows photographing my children who ride competitively. They've gone off to college this year, and riding for their college team, but I was at the show taking pictures of them, and then when I retired, I decided to just upgrade my equipment and do it full time, and we turned professional, and like I said that was about 3 years ago. We have grown since that time, and yes we do have a number of shows that we have contracted and we do them every year. There's several groups in central Pennsylvania, Southern Delaware and Maryland, and we go as far north as north east Pennsylvania and north central New Jersey.
DAMIEN: So you have no problem traveling around if someone wants old Paint photographed in th barn, or for shows?
TOM: No, not at all. We do private barn shoots. We travel pretty much any distance, I mean within reason, and it doesn't cost the client anything to have us come and do a shoot at their location. It also does not cost the show producer or manager for us to come and photograph a show. We basically sell our photos online. We do not print our images at the shows. I just don't believe in doing that. I think the quality suffers if you're trying to print at the show. I think we concentrate on taking the photographs at the shows. I'd rather not deal with the computers and showing the clients the images at the show, although, we do have that capability, I'd rather concentrate on taking the images and getting the images correct. I have a number of shooters that work for us. My wife is my secondary shooter, and our two children have also shot for us, and I have a couple other people that I also have. I'm losing a couple of my photographers to college in another month, and I have a couple of people that I'm in the process of training. Like I said, it doesn't cost the manager of a show anything for us to come and shoot. We generally take the images on one day, and I partially edit and crop most of the images before I put them on the website. I try to give the customer a fairly good indication of what they will receive if they order a print of that image. A lot of other photographers don't take the time or the effort to crop or edit their images before they go on their website, and I'm not a big fan of that idea, but again, we do not print at the shows just because I think the quality suffers. I have a professional printing company that does nothing but that, and they can control the quality. They print the image exactly the way I send it to them. I fine tune the image as much as I possibly can, and I send it to them. Everything that we do is digital. We shoot digitally, obviously, and all of our files are kept in digital format so I can send them the files and they print the images on professional paper and the results are excellent. I have had no problems or any complaints whatsoever about our prints. We also take great care in mailing out our prints to the customers. It takes quite a bit of expense to package the prints but they arrive to the customer in good condition.
DAMIEN: We are speaking with Tom Rowe of Hoof Print Images in Westchester, PA . You are listening to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. We're going to take a short break for these commercial announcements, we'll be right back.
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ANNOUNCER: We now return you to the VTalk Radio Photographer's Spotlight with your host, Damien Allen. DAMIEN: Welcome back to the VTalk Radio's Photographer Spotlight. We are back in the studio via phone with Mr. Tom Rowe of Hoof Print Images, and equestrian photographer down in Westchester, PA, and we're talking about the kinds of things he does. Besides the equestrian photography, what other photography services do you offer?
TOM: We generally try to stick with the equine photography. That is our primary purpose. We do have two weddings coming up that we have been contracted to do, but they are friends of ours. In general we can photograph anything from real estate to gardens to portraits to any type of sporting event. Obviously, photographing horse shows. We are very used to sporting action so we can photograph any type of sport where there is quick or fast action that you want to capture, but the horse shows generally take up our weekend and during the week, editing and doing other parts of the business fulfilling orders and doing mailings and what not. So there's really not a lot of other time to do other events, but again we could do them and I would be interested in doing other things, but again, we are 99 1/10th percent of the time we are involved with equine photography.
DAMIEN: What are some of the big shows that you shoot for.
TOM: We have a whole series of shows. I wouldn't say they're huge shows. There are groups of shows in eastern Pennsylvania that we do. There's A-rated series at a farm called Ashley Meadows Farm. We do a series down at the Wicomico Equestrian Center in Salisbury, MD. We have the Devin Horse and Pony Show every July which we just finished not too long ago. That's a four day show that's held at the Devin Fairgrounds which also, obviously, has the very large Devin Horse Show which my son has ridden in, and I have photographed several people at that show. There's other smaller groups of shows. There's the Delaware Valley Horse Show Association in central New Jersey and the Chesapeake Bay Horse Show Association. One of the other big groups of shows we do is the Central Pennsylvania Junior Horse Show which is located in the Harrisburg area.
DAMIEN: Well it sounds like your incredibly lucky to be able to take what was a family passion with the children riding competitively and segue it into a business that's thriving and allows you to go to work every day doing something you love to do which is being around horses and taking pictures.
TOM: Exactly. We own five horses ourselves. We board the horses. Again, my children ride and my wife rides. I do occasionally, but again time is just not there for me to do that. Twenty, twenty-five years ago I was a little bit afraid of horses; intimidated by I guess their size which I think a lot of people are when they first encounter a horse, but I'm perfectly at ease with them now. Like I said, we own five animals and I act as the show dad or the groom, you know, I hold the horses or whatever, you know, at the shows sometimes. Again, time being critical. I used to attend a lot more shows, not as a photographer, but you know just as a dad and handling our animals for my kids, but being around them for the last few years constantly, I've just grown to know what to expect out of the animal and how to handle them. They're just very impressive animals. They're beautiful animals.
DAMIEN: In deed they are. Out of curiosity I wonder if this opinion will share over the phone, but friends of mine have raised horses; I've been around them all my life, and I was very afraid of them when I was smaller because they are just huge, you know, 1500 lb animal plus or whatever, but as I grew older and spent more time around them, I find them to be basically just giant dogs.
TOM: Yes. Yes. Exactly. They are. They are like family pets, and they all have different personalities, different characteristics, and it's amazing photographing a series of shows. You get to see some of the riders, you know, several times during the year you get to see the same animals several times a year so you get to know the people that you're photographing. It's really kind of enjoyable to know that you're going to see the same group of people, you know, like once a month or whatever. Or once every other month, or when you go back to that particular event and it's also kind of neat to see new people all the time. You really never know who you're going to be photographing or who is actually going to be at an event which is really neat. You meet a lot of interesting people from various backgrounds, but they all have one thing in common and that's the horses which is pretty neat.
DAMIEN: If you were to pick one dream shoot, what would it be?
TOM: What would it be? I like the chase event. Obviously, there's a lot of competition in the horse show photography world and we have sort of found our own little niche with the group of shows that we do, but again, I like the events that are out in the field in the natural settings where people aren't especially dressed up. They're just out to have an enjoyable ride through the country, go over jumps that are optional. Some of these events are timed; some of them aren't. It's just, you know, especially in the fall and the spring is when most of these events are held, the countryside just looks nice, the lighting is terrific for photography because they usually start early in the morning and end late in the afternoon. I like the water crossing and you never know what's going to happen and there's a lot of interesting shots that we've taken over the past several years of people doing just about anything to get a horse across a small crick or to go over a jump or unfortunately people do fall off of horses, but it makes for some pretty crazy pictures at times, but to answer your question, what my dream shoot would be, would be some sort of outdoor activity in the countryside or even like a carriage race through a course in the country eventing or cross-country is very exciting because the jumps are bigger and there's a lot of water involved usually a lot of speed. The animals are going very quickly, but I guess that would be my favorite.
DAMIEN: Amish Grand Prix.
TOM: Yes, yes, exactly, exactly.
DAMIEN: Wonderful. Tom, could you give us your website and contact information again please?
TOM: Sure. It's Hoof Print Images and we're at www.hoofprintimages.com. And we live in Westchester, PA, which is about 30 some miles southwest of Philadelphia and our address is 42 Old Barn Drive, Westchester, PA 19382 and our phone number is (610) 399-1385.
DAMIEN: We have been speaking with Tom Rowe of Hoof Print Images in Westchester, PA. Thank you very much for joining us today on the program.
TOM: It was my pleasure, Damien.
DAMIEN: You have been listening to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. I'm your host, Damien Allen, have a great afternoon.
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