Yesterday I was out on an absolutely beautiful day taking photos of the Hunter Trials put on by the Elkridge-Harford Hunt Club.

If you’ve ever been to an event like this, you would know that horse jumps are spread out over a large area. Typically as a photographer, you can usually find a location to capture two, maybe three jumps at a reasonable distance to produce decent images.

For the first time at an event, I experimented with using a remote camera. It was like being in two places at the same time!

For this shot, I setup my camera about 8 feet away from the side of the jump with my 14mm lens. I used a special cable that connects the camera to one of my Pocket Wizard radio receivers.

I was about 1500 feet away shooting at a different jump, but could see this jump and manually triggered my transmitter as horses made their jumps at this fence. Being 1500 feet away and not having a good angle (horse running away from me) does bring in more challenges — such as knowing exactly when the horse is about to jump. I found myself hitting the trigger button a bit early or late, so I did not always get the “perfect” shot. Now knowing this, I will make sure to setup future remote cameras in locations that I will be able to nail the jump at a higher percentage.

I’m looking forward to my next equestrian event to try this out again.