I just returned from a fantastic workshop with ANPW in Provence, France. One of the most exciting days involved traveling to the Camargue area of southern France to photograph the famous white horses of this region. These horses love the water so we arranged a shoot with a local ranch to photograph the horses running through some deep marsh water. And lucky for us, we had a terrific shooting platform; an old military truck with high clearance to travel through the marshlands.
I’ve said this many times on workshops, and this shoot proved it to be true again; the background can make or break an image. If we had been photographing at ground level there would be only a few of the horses visible from side angles. But perched high off the ground in the truck, we had a terrific angle to show all the horses galloping across the marsh, not just a couple. Also, the high angle eliminated the white clouds on the horizon seen at ground level. Instead, the frame was filled with marsh and galloping white horses, no distracting background white spots in this frame. Sometimes the ground level is the place to shoot, other times not. But just remember, check your background as often as you check your subject for good compositions.