Each time I count the horses in this photograph I come out with a different number - but if the number is indeed exactly 100, that is just serendipity and not some sort of calculated decision. There were always rogue horses scattering in different directions so planning an exact number would be folly. But it makes for a nice story and a good title.
I had been conceptually visualizing this idea for some time and fully understood that the execution in the field could not really be prescriptive or preplanned; much would have to be figured out during the day depending on the wind direction and the size and behaviour of the herd. The only known known was that we would be finished long before breakfast – it was always going to be a first rays of light shot and in mid-summer that meant a 6 am shoot. The mood had to be ethereal and by 7 am the light that I wanted would have gone. It’s all fine margins.
The overriding need was to convey a sense of scale; if I failed in that, the picture would also fail. I decided only a few days before arriving in central Turkey to hire a cherry picker to give me height optionality and the ability to adapt to the circumstances as I found them. That was a good decision; this is a long way to come without a full tool kit.
It is counterintuitive for the camera to be chasing imagery that is running away from the lens. In so much of my work, I am doing exactly the opposite, but this photograph was about leveraging the dust and I saw the potential of the dust trail offering the lead canvas - that meant shooting from behind the herd. In this one frame the dogs and the wrangler fell perfectly and gave me composition balance.
It’s a lucky shot, but I do believe that sometimes you earn your luck.
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