Dates back nearly 400 years ago to when european explorers first came to these Barrier Islands. Now, the wild horse is a beautiful animal and a joy to photograph, and this week, were gonna be meeting up with professional wildlife photographer jared lloyd, and hes gonna share with us his techniques for photographing these amazing animals. Im your host, doug gardner, and thank you for joining me on another edition of wild Photo Adventures. Jared, its good to see you again, man. I enjoyed shooting with you this past winter. What you got in store for us now . Well, were gonna be photographing wild horses on the coast of North Carolina. Were starting out down in what we call the Crystal Coast and making our way north up to the outer banks, photographing several different groups along the way. Awesome. Awesome. Its sunny right now, but i think they got reports of some weather coming in. Oh, yeah. Weve got a subtropical storm moving in on us this week, and so were gonna have to work fast and work hard with the light that weve got right now. Well, lets get our gear and get started, make the best of every moment. Absolutely. All right, doug, were here in the Rachel Carson estuarine preserve right now along the core banks of North Carolina, and if you look out, you can already see out there in that tidal flat 20, maybe even 30 horses that are starting to feed on that spartina out there. The lights starting to drop down in the horizon. Were getting ready to have a fantastic afternoon out here, i think. Cool. Lets do it. Jared, this is gorgeous. Oh, yeah, it doesnt get any better than this, doug. These tidal flats that were in right now, theyre full of spartina, which is just pretty much a type of marsh grass, and since it floods out like this, its able to support this really lush vegetation. Now, we cant really see it right now but theyre all piled up in here, as you see, four in front of us and maybe as many as 20 just off to the side, aril on this spartina thats growing through here. Thats their primary food . Thats their primary food source on this island right here. I think its real important to, you know, get a low angle of view here on these horses. It really kind of puts them in perspective when you think about, you know, how majestic these animals really are. I try to shoot with a real shallow depth of field on these animals, try to blur my background a little bit. You know, weve got this little spit of shorebirds right here in ont us. We got a possibility for two completely different shots. Oh, yeah. We can focus on the bird, get the bird in nice and sharp focus and let it be a bird shot with wild horses in the background or we can let the birds be blurred, focusstill get sharp focus on those horses, let it be a horse shot with accompanyinbirds in the foreground, all cordg to taste, what youre you know, what youre looking for. Splashing, we got splashing. Oh, beautiful. Nice, tall sand dune in the background. You know, jared, you know, you just dont think about wildtrue wild horses being out here on the outer banks on the east coast. Absolutely, and whats really unique about that, these horses have been here far longer than the horses out west. Really . Yeah. Justthis was the point of contact. This is where, you know, european civilization crashed into the north american continent. Yeah, this is really, really nice. You know, they positioned themselves now to where were shooting directly into the sun. We need to change angles, and theres a huge group of horses over there. Maybe we can set up on them, get on the other side of them, the sunny de of them. Oh, yeahyeah, i mean, these silhouettes are really nice, but having a large group likehat, you have to understand thats gonna bmultiple harems that are all hanging out together, and here we are in the springtime. This is breeding season; this is mating season. Tensions are high. Exactly. You know, springtime is here, and love is in the air, and these stallions are gonna be fighting with each other today, especially when we have them congregated together like this. Thatd be great if we can catch some of that behavior. You know, this is the best time of day to be shooting. Were here in the last hour of light, and its not gonna do anything but get better and better. Thats right. Obviously, you know, weve worked our way in on these horses. See, heads down; theyre eating right now. Theyre comfortable with us being here, and so this is a perfect scenario, because, you know, we can switch positions, you know, experiment with different lighting situations right now, and theyre perfectly at ease with us being this close. One of the other really cool things about this particular scenario, jared, is thethe white ibis. Yeah. Theyre feeding right alongside these beautiful animals, and that just adds to the entire shot by itself. All right, doug, so we got groups of horses on either side of this body of water right now. Stallions appear to be looking at each other. So keep your eyes out. We might get some action here if were lucky. All right, we got this guy coming across. Is that a possible challenger . Yep. Ears are still forward, so hes curious. It is a stallion, though. Definitely a stallion. All right, we got three. We got a third challenger coming in. All right, doug, me and you just stay close. Oh, look at that look. Coming at us to the right. Were gonna have a showdown. Look at this. Look at this. In front of you. In front of you. In front of you. This is absolutely beautiful. Jared, this has been absolutely fantastic. Great afternoon, great subjects, beautiful light, and we actually were able to get a little bit of action shots. You know, a lot of its just portrait stuff, but we were able to get one fight and a couple horses splashing, running through the water, which is really nice, but you know what . Tomorrows another day, and we got a lot of other locations to hit. What we got so far, im pretty happy about. Yeah, i am too. Lets ride. Jared, i really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule this week to share with us this beautiful place of carova. I had no idea this place even existed, much less, you know, the home of these beautiful wild horses. Howd you get started in photographing wild horses . Well, doug, i literally, i grew up around these horses out here, you know . Ive spent the vast majority of my life, you know, either out here in carova beach around these wild horses or just across the water on the mainland, what we call the inner banks, essentially, and so, you know, from day one, theyve been an integral part of my life, and, you know, here i am now making a living as a professional photographer photographing them. Thats awesome. What is it that about the wild horse that Everybody Loves so much . I mean, everybody seems to be drawn by, you know, wild horses. They love pictures of wild horses, especially ones out west. Sure, i mean, i think what it is is the romanticism of the animal. You know, you think about our history as as, you know, a country, as a culture. You know, our world as we know it was founded on the back of a horse, you know . And even though horses nowadays dont have the same sort of everyday relevance to our lives like they did, say, back in the 1800s or the 1700s, you know, that romanticism is still an undercurrent that runs strong in our culture. People love horses, simple as that, whether its, you know, wild horses out in the Virginia Range of nevada or wild horses galloping, you know, across the sand dunes of carova beach here in North Carolina. Now, you also run tours out here, correct . Absolutely. Yes, i do. Yeah, i do a number of different things. Most of the stuff that i do is, of course, you know, photographyrelated, but i also do Environmental Education with these horses as well. You know, iyou know, these horses, like i said, are an integral part of my life nowadays. Yesterday afternoon was fantastic down at the Rachel Carson estuarine preserve, and that was a completely different scene than what we got here. You know, it was backwater and sand dunes. Here were in a nice marsh, beautiful Early Morning light. Yeah, a lot of people think that these birds here only feed on what the horses stir up as their Walking Around grazing and stuff like that, but as you see, that birds actually pulling parasites off of that horse, and thats why its a mutualistic symbiotic relationship instead of just the bird benefiting from the horse being out here. Oh, there you go. There he goes. Just like you said. Bird jumped right back up on top. This is when they get a little skittish. We just need that horses head to come up now. Oh, man. See what i mean . They get skittish when they get up there like that, and hes gone. With this horse standing in the marsh like this, you know, when you look through the camera, it looks like a horse with no legs, and when youre trying to compose the shots, you know, a lot of firsttime photographers, the first thing theyre gonna do, theyre gonna start composing the shot with what they can see of the horse when, in reality, you have to kind of guess where even though you cant see the horses legs and where his hooves actually hit the ground, you have to kind of allow for the legs actually extending down through the grass. If not, its gonna look like a horse laying on his belly in the grass. Hes hopped up and down on the horse a couple times, but i have yet to get the shot of him, cause when he stands on his back, the horse has got his head down in the marsh, feeding, and thats not thats not the shot we want. No, no. We want the horses head up with the birds head up. Its a waiting game, you know, at this point. Thats all it is. Sometimes it happens; sometimes it wont happen, but taking time and slowing down and waiting a situation out, thats when youre gonna get those magical moments on film. Oh, yeah. Hey, you have to work the subject, you know . People mess up when they just show up to a scene, they see beautiful light, they see a beautiful subject, they take a couple pictures, they think theyve got it, and they walk away. Right. Instead, you know, when youre working with wildlife like this, you know, you just need to give it time. You need to sit it out; you need to wait the horse out. You need to wait whatever it is that youre working out until that magic moment happens to occur and youre there to photograph it. And a lot of times, it doesnt happen. No, absolutely. But you know what . If you move on, you dont even give that magic moment a chance to happen. Thats nice. Head up, tail swishing. This is a beautiful environmental shot here. I love shooting these horses in the marsh. Yeah, you know, with the with the way the prevailing winds are today out of the southwest, typically this time of the year, say, you know, mid to late spring, we expect to actually find the horses out on the beach. Whats going on, you have different multiple different species of biting flies that are hatching out here, and as you can see and as you can see with the cameraman over there, you know, were constantly batting these things away, and its the same thing with these horses. Theyre having to deal with this, and so with a strong southwest wind, typically that will push the horses right out onto the beach in order to escape those biting flies. So, you know, this morning, we started off trying to cruise the beach and look for horses but didnt really see anything. So i figured wed try the next best option and just go ahead and cut across the island and come back up here into the marsh, which obviously worked out for us. Yeah, its beautiful. This is beautiful. This has been a wild week, jared, traveling up and down the outer banks, looking for wild horses. What brought em here . Well, thats a good question, doug. Theres a lot of theories out there. You know, my whole life, i was always told shipwrecked spanish galleons, you know. It makes a lot of sense. This is the graveyard of the atlantic out here, kind of like the original bermuda triangle, if you will. You know, theres Something Like 2,000 shipwrecks off of our coast, and, you know, right along the coast of our our Barrier Islands is the gulf stream, which was the major traffic route forfor ships, you know, all throughout the colonial period. However, you know, that is possible but not really all that probable, though. One of the dominant theories thats starting to surface right now is actually that these horses, though they are of spanish origin as far as their breed, actually most likely arrived here from the english instead, and, you know, the spanish shipwrecked galleons, kind of takes a bit of a stretch of the imagination to formulate that idea. However, what we do know about the history of the outer banks, first and foremost, the english attempted to colonize the outer banks starting all the way back in the early 1580s. So, first and foremost, we know that the english attempted to establish a colony here. We know they brought spanish livestock here. We know that they abandoned the colony and abandoned said such livestock as well, you know what i mean . So it doesnt take a whole lot to start to put together dots there, you know, to connect dots. And nowadays, we have one thing on our side that we never had before, and thats genetics, and so what we know about these horses, the banker horse, what we have out here, and the banker horse, what we have down in shackleford banks, considered to be genetically identical to these horses right here, they share a gene with a breed of horse in puerto rico known as the puerto rican paso fino thats shared in no other population of horses on earth, and so, from a biologists standpoint, thats potentially your smoking gun right there. So, you know, like i said, its theres a lot of theories out there. Who knows . I wasnt there; you werent there. Nobody was actually there to witness this. But, you know, weve got a lot of really good, you know, facts and ideas that kind of build themselves or lend themselves to that theory that most likely they came from the lost colony. Amazing history behind these animals. It really is. Earlier this week, we started down on the south end of the outer banks at the Rachel Carson estuarine preserve. Now, those horses looked a little bit different or seemed a little bit different than what weve seen here. Yes. Is there any difference . No, theres definitely a difference. These horses, like i said, potentially trace their ancestry back some 400 years, we know they arrived back in the 1940s, actually. The Rachel Carson estuarine preserve was originally privately owned, those Three Islands that compose that preserve there, and the gentleman that owned that essentially brought his horses out and let em go onto that island, you know . Just like he saw horses across the water over on shackleford banks, he figured his horses could do just fine there. Well, eventually, the state ended up purchasing the land, creating the estuarine preserve there, and the horses remained. Wow. Well, now, you know, this looks like really barren landscape, doesnt look like a whole lot of food value here, but remarkably, these animals look way healthier than some of the domestic horses i see. First and foremost, you have to think about it this way you know, we breed horses to exhibit characteristics that are beneficial to us, what we want out of that horse. This island, on the other hand, is gonna breed characteristics in these horses that is beneficial to that horse right there. You know, if they were not able to adapt, if they were not able to survive, you know, they wouldnt be here. Its simple as that. You have five distinct populations of wild horses on the atlantic coast, and all five of these populations have that same characteristic, that big fat belly. What that is is the salt, you know . Theres not really fresh water for these horses. Sure, theyre these horses right here, theyre drinking from the rainwater puddles and things like that. Theyre drinking from the currituck sound. But you have to imagine, though think about this wind thats blowing across the island right now. You know, we are being bathed in salt as we talk, and so that means the water that they drink, sure, its rainwater, but give it a couple of days of sitting there, and it starts to absorb salt from the environment. Same thing with all their food out here. You think about it. Just like the windshield of your car becomes kind of coated with that sort of film that you have to constantly scrub off out here, so does their food get coated with this, and so, you know, when humans, we eat way too much salt, what happens . We retain water, and we bloat. And so thats all were seeing here. You know, horses, they dont retain fat on their bellies. They put the fat on their rumps, you know what i mean . So what were seeing just a big, bloated belly from all the salt in their diet. Well, this has been absolutely amazing. You know, weve been fighting weather all week, you know, periods of sun, heavy clouds, a subtropical storm sitting right off the coast. Its been a battle. You know, we had great light here earlier. The horses have been kind of working all the way around us. Lights getting kind of bad. Maybe well come back tomorrow and see if we can get some better shots. Lets do it. Oh, look at this. Head down, thats the stallion in the back there. Hes rounding his girls up, trying to keep em away from that other stallion thats over there. Oh, man, jared, this is awesome, man. We got fighting going on. This is too cool. You know, we just come over these dunes, and we saw a group of horses, got over here, and there were two groups of horses, and you know when that happens during breeding season, you got two stallions, one in each group. Tensions are high, youre gonna have some fights. Oh, absolutely, and these two stallions, theyre gonna go at it all day like this. As long as theyre in the line of sight of each other, theyre gonna continue to fight. Theres a longtime rivalry between these two stallions right here, and stallions, they do maintain territories. Theres an overlap in territory, and along those overlaps, thats where we get situations like this. Thats where we get look, look, look, theyre over here fighting, to your right, to your right. Oh, man, look at em go. Look at em kicking, dust flying. Oh, man. Awesome, awesome. Bad light but good behavior. Is what it is. Now, how long are they gonna fight . Is this gonna be over shortly or itll be off and on like this all day. Pretty much theyll usually last maybe a minute or two, little bit of scuffles like this. This is a territorial fight. This has got nothing to do with females. You know, if females were involved in this fight, wed see blood right now. But they just keep coming over to each other. They scuffle; they rear back. You know, they kick around, and then they walk away, and they just go back to their females and start