In the fight to stand out in today’s crowded marketplace, professional and aesthetic equestrian photography can be another way to differentiate from your competitors. As far as we know, aesthetic photography is essential to creating credibility, a favorable impression, and a sense of style and customer engagement.
By Therese Alhaug. Photos by Bruno Barata & Lena Saugen.
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensory-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as “critical reflection on art, culture, and nature.”
The power of aesthetics
Numerous philosophers have attempted to tackle the concept of aesthetics: or beauty and art. For Immanuel Kant, the aesthetic experience of beauty is a judgment of a subjective, but common, human truth. For Arthur Schopenhauer, aesthetic contemplation of beauty is the freest and most pure that intellect can be. He believes that only in terms of aesthetics do we contemplate perfection of form without any worldly agenda. But are we aware the power of aesthetics? And are we aware of how aesthetically pleasing content evokes feelings, reactions & conversations? That beauty itself has the power to evoke a positive mind?
The power of Aesthetics in equestrian business.
In fact, it’s said that 40% of people will respond better to visual information about a business than to plain text. Therefore – some questions to ask yourself when promoting your equestrian business should be: Do my images or videos support claims or facts within the content? Do they meet quality standards from a technical perspective? Are they aesthetically pleasing? Are my visual content of the quality that others will want to share? And, do not forget Google’s power: Multimedia-based content has been shown to be shared up to 12X more than text content.
Aesthetic qualities trigger a pleasing response in the viewer. So, how can the Equestrian business take advantage of aesthetically pleasing content in a rapidly growing equestrian world? Well, we are certainly lucky enough to work with one of the most aesthetic creatures on the planet – the horse.
Uses photography as a key factor
In a highly competitive and dynamic equestrian world, it is hard to keep up with the changes and demands that come to us so fast. Every business has to be fully aware of what is coming up, to stay successful. It’s certainly a big challenge for horse breeders and trading stables worldwide, many are looking for new ways to stay on top. One company that has taken advantage of the power of Aesthetics in assisting her equestrian customers is Lusitano Horsefinder, that assists Lusitano breeders in their web-based marketing strategies.
“For our clients and in particular the Lusitano Breeders we saw that to achieve the next level it required a new and modern approach. We wanted to give our clients a great, stylish image that reflects their business, horses and unique status. So, we decided to take the step to partner in a far greater way with the Lusitano breeders.
Lusitano Horsefinder decided to specialize in upgrading their client’s websites and assist them in producing high-quality content marketing, delivering high-quality photography in particular.
“To reach front page exposure is not an easy task, it requires times, daily commitment, patience and a whole lot of money, but in the end, it’s a cost effective marketing strategy. Coupled with a quality ‘content marketing strategy,’ we believe you have a powerful business position in the International Markets of today. We also believe that high-quality photos are extremely important to support high-quality marketing, as they are the window to your business and the way to capture attention. “
“Coudelaria Vila Viçosa had named their stud farm after the stunning historic town where they are located so we decided what better way to present them than with an opening photo shoot in front of the summer palace.”
This year, two Portuguese breeders decided to show their work in a new way with the assistance of Lusitano Horsefinders expertise: Coudelaria Vila Viçosa and Coudelaria Luís Bastos:
“Coudelaria Luís Bastos is a relatively young stud that has only been breeding purebred Lusitanos for the last 12 years. In this short time, they have gone from strength to strength achieving best breeder status with numerous gold and silver medals for their young stock at the Breed Shows. By providing them with professional images and videos, we offer them a dynamic website and a cool style to show his horses. It was much the same with Thomas and Michaela Kleba at Coudelaria Vila Viçosa; a more established stud farm breeding sport and leisure Lusitanos. They had been in the business for over 25 years and had already a very good reputation for the quality of their horses, achieving more than once ‘best breeder’ in Portugal. However, even with their long-established time and reputation, they had no world ranking in SEO searches and no status in Google. We launched their website within ours in June this year, and they have already achieved world ranking position 12 no other Portuguese Lusitano Breeders are ahead of them. They had named their stud farm after the stunning historic town where they are located, so we decided what better way to present them than with an opening photo shoot in front of the summer palace. Our photographer, Lena Saugen, took the images and they have achieved stunning results giving the stud farm an even stronger identity and partnered them with their town. We also provided them with a professionally produced video using a modern drone and handheld video technology, Teresa explains.
“Beauty itself has the power to evoke a positive mind”
Today, Lusitano Horsefinder have many other breeders joining them on this journey, not only from Portugal but many other countries too.
“We are very careful in how we photograph our breeders farms and horses the same with riders and other businesses. It is very important to fully understand the business and what image they are looking to portray. For instance overly romantic images of baroque horses with ladies wearing flowing gowns, or wild horses galloping free through the ocean, are not supportive to a breeder wanting to demonstrate they produce sport Lusitanos and gain the attentive of competition riders. This does not mean to say that we cannot be creative with our images because we are always looking to creative and dynamic but still giving the right message to the client and a strong image. For instance will Luis Bastos we choose to have very sharp clean images using some traditional clothing with the colts to illustrate that these are old breeds but the sharp images in modern background illustrate the modern time. With Vila Vicosa we choose a similar concept but this time linking them to their related historic city and giving extra elegance to the horses which are tall and classic”.
Source:
Boundless. “What Makes Art Beautiful?.” Boundless Art History. Boundless, 20 Sep. 2016. Retrieved 01 Nov. 2016 from.
Garrisoneverest. How photography influences buyer behavior. 2016.