Emmanuel Ortiz

• Doma, Criollo horse training
• Pato, at play
• Yerra, working livestock

Emmanuel Ortiz offers :

• > Signed prints.
• > Information about exhibitions.
• > Reports about your horses, your own set-up, or about the equestrian activities which you organise and practice.
• > Portraits of your horses or stories about your horse-breeding.

Emmanuel Ortiz at Tropoja in northern Albania on the frontier with Kosovo. While the world's attention was concentrated on the « World 98 », war was starting in Kosovo…

Pato, a photographer at play

Report in pictures by Emmanuel Ortiz
Extract from the exhibition « Man and Horse 

In Argentina, while reporting on Pato, Emmanuel Ortiz started taking photographs while on horseback to follow the game.  For him, photos of horses taken from the ground lack something.  « You can’t feel the speed or the balance of the rider, » says Emmanuel.

« Besides, from a purely personal point of view, I have never liked the flat effect of images taken with a telephoto lense, which is often the case in equestrian photography. It is the distance between me and the subject which annoys me.  I want to be able to feel the wind on my images, » he explains.

Getting into the saddle then seemed obvious.  So, after having tried several horses, Emmanuel Ortiz arrived at a satisfactory result.  « Once the chrome surfaces of the Rolleiflex lense terrified the horse, while another caused my mount to gallop like a mule., » he said.  To be at the same height as the other horsemen allows Emmanuel a much more realistic approach.  It is true that, in the picture, the difference is striking.  The photographer on horseback no longer worries about the line of the horizon, and it is not necessary for him to research the effects of the focus, it is enough for him to regulate his speed to that of the horseman he wishes to photograph.

Emmanuel Ortiz wants, therefore, to go more thoroughly into the way he photographs equestrian disciplines.  The speed and strategy of Polo is of particular interest to him.  For him, photographing Pato is a delight, like Polo, the field is bigger than the 200 metres necessary to allow the mounted photographer to take off, and to capture the uniquely elegant moments and to fix on film the dexterity of the horsemen and their mounts.