The love of a Mustang

2009 was my first encounter of seeing wild horses and thought “Wow! That was so cool!” Then I was introduced to the South Steens HMA (Herd Management Area) in 2011 and was convinced that I must return every year to photograph them. So that is what I have been doing, for over a decade, going out to their wide-open range to photograph them and watch them be their magnificent selves.

My love for horses is huge but my love for the mustang has grown far bigger than just loving a horse. Their fate is not for certain. Will they remain on the range, wild and free? Or will they be gathered? And if gathered, will they remain in a holding pen for life? Or adopted to a loving home? Now I’m not going to get into the politics surrounding all that. My mission as an equine portrait photographer is to help shed more positive light on the adoptability of the mustang.

How the Mission Came About

This mission came about with two recent events. The summer of 2023 I was very fortunate to photograph a gal and her mustang that she had adopted from the corrals and gentled. It came to my realization when we first talked on the phone that I had photographed her mustang when he was a baby in the wild. It was so cool having had that experience!! You can read more about it here. This event spurred an emotion in me to photograph more of them.

At the end of that summer, I attended the Teens & Oregon Mustang Challenge and watched most of the competition along with the auction. Watching those trainers with their mustangs, that had only been out of the wild horse corrals roughly a 100 days, go through obstacles in a domestic setting, was awesome! They are just fantastic horses!

Like a Well-Aimed Slap from a Horse's Tail...

My mission still wasn’t clear until a month or so later. Sure I wanted to photograph more mustangs but what was my direction. Then it hit me like a well-aimed slap from a horse’s tail. If you know, you know! By photographing these beautiful animals in their adopted life and sharing the discipline in which they are used, this can be used as a “voice” to bring more attention to their abilities to be gentled and a viable contender when looking for a horse.