What to Expect at an Equine Branding Photoshoot: A Day at the Barn With Spicee Shoppe
Brooke's Photography | Equine, canine and branding photographer serving Vancouver and the Lower Mainland
An equine branding session is part planning, part collaboration, and part capturing you doing what you actually love. It means picking the right location, planning around the light, and building a shot list around your products, your talents, and your story, then photographing all of it together. As an equine branding photographer based in Vancouver, working with businesses across the Lower Mainland, this is exactly how I plan every session.
To me, a branding session should make you light up when you see yourself through my lens. I want you to glow during the session and feel grateful after, because the whole thing was about you. Your talents, your personality, showcased to the world you serve.
That's what this one was.
Alex from Spicee Shoppe has done an amazing job building her brand so far. Shooting her own product photos, running her own website, doing it all herself, and doing it well. That takes real skill and real hustle. But she reached a point where she wanted more than what she could capture on her own. She wanted someone in her corner to help her show off her products and her personality in a way that felt bigger, more creative, more her. That's where I came in, not to take over, but to support what she'd already built and help her see it the way the rest of the world deserves to see it.
People ask me a lot what actually happens during a branding session. Not the polished version, the real one. What do we plan, what do we bring, what happens if the weather doesn't cooperate. So I wanted to walk you through one from start to finish, using a recent session I shot for Spicee Shoppe at the barn where her whole life with horses happens.
Because here's the thing I want every business owner reading this to understand. A branding session isn't just
about showing up and taking pretty pictures of you. It's a plan, built around your talents, your products, and your personality, so the final images actually look like your business. Not generic. Not borrowed. Yours.
Choosing the location and planning around the light
Long before we picked a date, we picked the location. This session happened at the barn where Alex spends her days, the place her whole world with horses revolves around. That mattered. It's not a rented backdrop, it's where her real life happens, and that authenticity shows up in every frame.
Once we had the location, and permission from the property owner, always the first practical step, and one people forget to think about when they picture a branding shoot. Then came the part most people never think about at all: timing.
I use sunset apps to map out exactly where the light will fall in that specific location, at that specific time of year, so we know when the lighting is going to be perfect and not just okay. I keep a close eye on the weather leading up to the date, because being ready to pivot is part of the job. And with this session, that's exactly what happened. The forecast turned nasty and rainy, so we rescheduled. Not a setback, just part of doing this properly. Chasing bad light for the sake of keeping a date on the calendar never serves the final images, and it never serves you.
Planning what we're actually photographing
Once the date was locked in, we planned the content. What products were coming. Whether other models would be involved. Whether a horse would be part of the story, and if so, whose.
Every one of these decisions gets made before I ever arrive on site, because a session with a plan looks completely different from a session that's winging it. For this one, Alex brought her t-shirts, hoodies, hats and lap top. On the day itself, I arrive early and I walk the property to find the spots with the best light, the best backdrops, the best textures, so when we start shooting, we're not wasting time figuring that out together. Then I review the plan with the client, and we get to work.
Starting with the products, styled her way
We started with the t-shirts. Alex knows her products better than anyone, so she chose the colours and the specific pieces we'd feature first. My job there was direction. Simple yes or no. That colour works, that one doesn't. That placement is right, let's try it differently. It was collaborative, but she led the styling, because it's her brand and her eye that built it.
We shot the shirts on their own, and then layered in props that told more of the story, saddles, tack, the things that belong in her world. We moved through the hoodies and hats the same way, and grabbed some behind the scenes shots of her setting up the display herself. Those little in-process moments end up being some of my favourites, because they show the work behind the brand, not just the finished product.
Bringing her into the frame, colour by colour
Once the product shots were done, we moved to Alex wearing her own pieces, and this is where the colour planning really paid off. We started in the riding ring, tack in hand. She was in a brown shirt that matched the browns of the ring almost perfectly. With the light hitting the way it did that afternoon, the whole scene came together seamlessly.
Then we switched things up. We moved to a jump painted pink and blue, and she changed into a pink hoodie to match. Then we photographed the clothes doing what they're actually made for. Because these pieces aren't designed just
to look cute on a hanger. They're made for horse girls living their actual horse girl lives. Matching her to the scene, colour for colour, is what made the images feel intentional instead of accidental. That's the kind of detail you only get when a session is planned around you specifically. Every colour choice mattered, and when you plan for it, it shows.
Taking the story outside the ring
From there we moved to a spot between the horse paddocks, and photographed her working on her laptop right there, horses looking on in the background. It's an unexpected place to picture someone working, and that's exactly why it works. It shows her in the place that actually inspires her, the place I'd bet she wishes she could work from every single day.
We kept building on that idea in a second location, more portrait style shots of her with the laptop, then a notebook added in, then a shot of the laptop resting on her feet while she lay in the grass, just to bring in a bit more creativity and play.
She was wearing her Nikes throughout, her actual barn shoes. Not a pair of cowboy boots borrowed to look the part. That's the kind of thing that keeps a session authentically you.
We wrapped the day with a shot from behind, her holding the laptop and notebook, phone tucked in her back pocket, wearing a hoodie, shot in black and white. Simple, but it says everything about the power of a well planned photo.
By the end of the session, something had shifted. This wasn't Alex setting up her own tripod anymore, angling her phone, doing it all alone the way she'd done for so long. She had someone in her corner, guiding the light, the colour, the story, so all she had to do was show up as herself. And she did. I watched her glow through the whole session, and when it was over, she was grateful, proud, and genuinely confident in a way that only comes from finally seeing yourself the way everyone else already sees you.
What this means for your own session
Whatever style of session you picture for your brand, studio, outdoors, somewhere in between, the thing that matters most is that it feels and looks like you. Planned around your products, your talents, your actual world, almost perfectly, so nothing feels borrowed or forced. You should walk away feeling good in your own images, confident in how you're showing up, because that's the whole point.
You've built something real. Your business deserves to be seen exactly as it is, not dressed up as something else. That's what I'm here to help with. We plan around your brand, your personality, and the details only you could bring, and the images end up looking like nobody else's, because they couldn't have come from anywhere else.
Check out Alex's custom designed equine wear, made for the spicy horse lovers!
Use code spiceethanks10 for 10% off your purchase
If this is the kind of session you've been picturing for your own brand, let's talk about what it would look like for you.
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