How to lie in photography without the use of photoshop

"The Arabian is a breed that attracts artistic people, often one might add, with all their attendant personality disorders." - Emma Maxwell

It's still too cold to do anything outside besides muck, feed and water. It's been a month of subzero temps and I won't bore you with more photos of the rock hard crusty snow we still have everywhere, with ice underneath. It hurts to breathe out there, and this morning when I called Mag and Bellis for breakfast, they refused to come to me, reluctant to leave the barn!  I'm at the point where I wish we could go back to mud, if you can believe this. I have forgotten what rain sounds like.

Nothing to do but read about horses online, and today my fb feed posted a photo that sucked up the next 4 hours of my day. Hopefully this will not suck up 4 of yours.

It was the 1970 sketch of the "ideal" Arabian horse drawn by beloved artist Gladys Brown Edwards. I don't know what makes her an authority but her image was used by the Arabian Horse Association, maybe that was it. More on the AHA later.

Someone posted this image to the conformation forum and tried to get a discussion going. I have quite a bit to say, that's why I blog and don't fb.

     
I've known this image since I was little, but today I noticed something new, something that has gone away in modern Arabians - depth through flank. Huh. Arabians are not supposed to be wasp-waisted. Sadly most of the horses I saw in Aachen were.

Here is an example of lack of depth of flank:

     
Imperial Imdal 1982 (Imagine this was a little glass figurine, and you took both ends and twisted. You can easily tell where the thing will break in half. Sorry for the disgusting analogy.)

But back to the "ideal" - I have a few complaints. Where do I put my saddle? Why is the head so small? Why is the right hind leg a classic post leg? And most mysterious of all to me:

Why is the horse drawn on a slope? Note his hind end is lower than his front. Why would she do this? It's like she looked at the photography of the day and decided fraudulent photographs are the way to design an ideal. I lost all respect for her today. And I wouldn't have noticed it except for the image in fb was cropped in the preview mode, cutting off that hind hoof.

Even when I was little I noticed the horses being posed on slopes to lower their hind ends. See Imperial Imdal above, his rear feet are falling out of the photo.

I remember getting mad as a kid. This is not honest. They're lying to me. And today I got mad all over again, cuz....

I had decided to go though Mag's pedigree photo album that I made, and try to find any horse that comes close to the "ideal." To my annoyance, almost all the horses were pictured with this trick. You don't even need a hill to do this - you just step slightly behind the horse and voila, it now has a more substantial hind end. Hopefully no one will actually measure the legs, cuz the hinds are going to be longer than the fronts from your perspective-illusion.

I thought I'd have to go way back in Mag's pedigree to find horses closer to the "ideal" but when I got to Mag's father I was surprised - he's the closest I found.

     
Depth of flank! 2001. One of the guidelines I've heard for judging Arabians says that the entire horse should give the impression of roundness. In fact ideally an Arabian will have three equally sized circles - one contains the forehand, one the middle, and one the hind end. This is virtually never the case. I like Poganin's roundness in this image. I understand it is related to his age and fitness, he didn't look like this as a young horse. Mag inherited his tiny butt and good legs. (And you can see that this photo is lying to us as well.)


     
What appears to be an amateur photo of Imperial Imdal, again. Even this amateur knows the trick!


     
This horse was scheduled to be gelded, but then an American saw him and brought him to the states to revolutionize the breed. I've seen videos, and it's true, he's this long. My former-favorite photographer, Johnny Johnson, employs the trick here. Imagine how rump-high this horse would be if he'd not had his photo tipped and cropped.

You already know who it is, but just in case, that's Bask. 1956.



     
Going down the line, this is Bask's son Negatraz, one of the best. Thank God Bask didn't pass on the ugliness, but instead, his nice shoulder and good joints. Oh, Negatraz, your hind legs are longer than your front! 1971.

     
Negatraz' son Monogramm, 1985, who traveled back to Poland to change the world. I love this image, but I'm being lied to again. He's the sire of Ekstern, Mag's grandsire, and this is where Ekstern got that trot.



     
I remember when I found this photo, I thought this horse Pepton matches the ideal! Now I see his hind feet leaving the photo. I've been deceived. But I found another photographer, who did not employ the trick, woo hoo, this is what he (possibly) really looked like, hind end in the air. 1977.



     
Ernestyna 1989, dam of Ekstern. From the date stamp and quality, I think this is an amateur photo. And the fact that her fronts, not her hinds, are leaving the image. Who knows, if viewed honestly, she might actually have a level topline.
     


     
Then I realized I'd done it myself, without knowing. I love this photo because Mag looks so balanced. His butt doesn't look so tiny. But then I realized I was standing slightly closer to his hind end than his front, accentuating his butt.

It really annoys me in the conformation forum when people send in images that are impossible to judge. I was considering asking for input on this image, but I know now that it's a fraud too.



     
OK this is a perfectly level shot, done by an "honest" photographer (gosh I hope so), but she's also employing a trick - she's obviously lying on the ground. I don't need to see this much of the belly of my horse *lol* This photo also shows how a horse can appear over at the knee when the horse is not - I was moving him back and forth and he had unweighted that leg. Something to think about - even faults can lie in photos.

Remember the time I drove 4 hours to see a horse with great legs, and when I arrived, they were toothpicks? The lies can go both ways.

Lately I've developed a possible method of evaluating legs when cameras lie. Assuming the horse is not wearing performance shoes (shown further down), compare the size of the hooves to the size of the joints. If the hooves seem huge compared to the knees, the bone is too light. I think a horse with good bone gives the illusion of having tiny hooves. Thoughts?

     
I looked up the conformation booklet today published in 2016 by the Arabian Horse Association, and this is their "ideal." They do not want a table-top back, apparently.

In my frustration today I tried to google the trick. I found something! An Arabian breeder and competitor (including jumping and racing) is also a photographer, and has some articles published in Arabian Horse World (my only contact with horses in the 7th grade).

Her name is Emma Maxwell. Allow me to paraphrase her 2009 article.

In the late 1800s, photos were side-view "mug shots" that were rarely flattering (see Ernestyna above). 100 years later the art of flattery became vital. The consequence is that it is far easier to assess the conformation of a modern horse's ancestors, than to assess a photo of a horse still living.

The classic era for stand-up photos was the 70s and 80s with clearly lit side-views of an alert horse that was not straining within an inch of its life. However, angles were used to subtly alter the dimensions of the horse. Taken from below to lengthen the legs, and from behind to lengthen the hip. Using a hill, or tipping and cropping the image provided 2 decades of  magazines featuring horses with longer hind legs than fore, giving the impression there was not a single flat paddock in the United States. 

Conformation is less easy to decipher these days, when a drastic increase in tension of the pose can radically alter the horse's outline from the one it had in a relaxed position. (This is one reason I prefer the older photos, the horses are standing more or less at ease.)


Even the show arenas in the states are hilly, as shown in this photo:
     
(This is the only image in this post of a horse not appearing in Mag's pedigree.)

To identify fraud, look at photos of different horses taken by the same photographer. Do they all look related, or like clones? Be suspicious. Then look at the same horse taken by different photographers (Pepton, above) - two different horses?

I routinely ignore adverts by certain photographers cuz the horse depicted is a phantom. (Does she mean Johnny Johnson?)

Sadly, everyone's eye is becoming accustomed to extreme Arabian heads that do not exist and I do object to the fact that my mental average horse is being distorted without my consent.

Check out the link above if you'd like to read the article, or if you'd like to critique my paraphrasing. She has some examples of how she altered photos in what she considers an unethical manner.

OK, now I'm gonna go outside and remind myself what my horse really looks like.