Girl with Horse - Tegan + Anna - Jacki Bruniquel Photography

My Father owned horses when he was young and told us countless stories of how he learnt to ride a horse bare back; he told us stories about galloping through the fields and holidays spent at the stables. When I was a litttle girl I always wanted a pony but my riding experiences were limited to outrides in the mountains on family holidays. At the ripe age of 36 I decided enough was enough and that it was time to fulfill my lifelong dream to learn to ride a horse properly, and so I begun to hang out at the Umdloti stables. This is where I first met Shelley and Tegan Knoop!

Shelley mentioned to me that she would like some pictures of her daughter Tegan with her beautiful horse Anna. Then she mentioned the words, creative, drama and art piece, and my mind started racing. I had a chat with my friend Drew Christie who is a wonderful stylist and hair dresser and he got EXCITED! I should have known then that a simple “Girl with horse” shoot was no longer an option, and simple had just flown right out of the door!

We decided to do three very different looks for this shoot all drawing on different elements of Tegan’s personality. One soft, dreamy and ethereal, one classic with show jumping riding gear, and one dark, mysterious and grungy. The very talented Charelle McAllister was called on to do make up and and Drew did hair and styling. My wonderful assistant Tash and my fiance Stu helped with the photography side, Luyanda helped with the horse and Shelley ran around all day making things happen. Thanks must be given to Tracy Laubscher from Olivelli Durban for lending us the black wedding dress! As I am sure you can now tell, the “girl with horse” shoot was anything but easy and anything but simple, it was production but it was totally worth the effort! With all shoots of this nature you are only as good as your team and in this case I had a dream team!!

If you are a photographer and interested in techie stuff. I used my Nikon D4 with the 70-200mm for pretty much all of the shoot. I only used natural light as we didn’t want the horse spooking and bolting off into the distance! This is the first proper photoshoot Tegan has done, she isn’t a professional model and she totally rocked it!!!!

If you would like to see a behind the scenes video about this shoot click here

Hair and Styling: Drew Christie 031 83 77 334
Makeup: Charelle Mc Allister 072 025 44 53
First Assistant: Tash Schoeman
Black Wedding Dress: Olivelli Durban
Groom: Luyanda
Huge thanks also to Stu and Shelley