Horse Whispere | Case Study
HORSE WHISPERER
Services: Concept Development, Art Direction, Studio Photography, Photorealistic CGI Environment Creation, AI Enhancement, Compositing & Post-Production | 2025
THE CONCEPT
Some people are born to ride. Molly just found the right photographer.
When I meet someone new, I'm not thinking about who they are, I’m thinking about the character waiting inside them and what story they could tell with the right wardrobe, the right light, and the right world built around them. My personal work is a series of cinematic stills, key frames pulled from a movie that doesn't exist. Images that give you just enough to build your own story.
When I met Molly in Bridgeport, CT, I saw a horse whisperer. Funny though, she had never been on a horse in her life.
THE CHALLENGE
The concept was clear. The obstacles were significant.
Molly had no riding experience and certainly wasn't going to perform death defying stunts. The landscape I had in mind: wide Montana plains, golden and stormy, with the kind of light that only exists for twenty minutes on a good day, was a world away from a Connecticut winter. And as with all my personal work, the budget was as close to zero as I could make it. I treat personal projects as boot camp: constrain the resources, sharpen the craft. When a well-budgeted commercial job comes in, you already know how to solve the hard problems. Most importantly, CGI gives me complete authorship over every element in the frame, nothing is left to chance, compromise, or the limitations of what exists in the physical world.
The challenge then was this: create a photorealistic, cinematic series of a woman riding and commanding horses across a landscape that didn't exist, in weather we didn't have, with a subject who had never sat in a saddle.
THE APPROACH
Pre-Production & Previsualization
Before anything was shot, I used AI to generate previsualization imagery, enough to communicate the concept to Molly clearly, get her excited about the vision, and confirm she was comfortable with what we were creating together. This is something I do on commercial jobs too: give the talent and the agency team something concrete to react to before a single light is set up.
Molly came on board immediately and helped pull wardrobe. The cowboy boots (essential to the series) came from my cousin Deena, who runs Botablu.com, an online vintage pre-owned boot shop. A creative favor in exchange for images. That's how personal work gets made.
Building the World Before the Shoot
In parallel with wardrobe prep, I began building the photorealistic CGI environments for the key image concepts. This is central to my hybrid workflow on both personal and commercial productions: construct the world first, then shoot the talent to match it. Knowing the light direction, color temperature, and perspective of the CGI scene before the shoot means every lighting decision in the studio is intentional. There's no guessing in post. 3D also allows for adjustments to the scene after the shoot, which leaves room to experiment on set.
To achieve the most realistic final results I used photogrammetry, custom modelling and photographic textures, rendered the scene in Blender 3D in Cycles Render Engine and final compositing with blue screen photography.
ON SET
For Molly to have something real to interact with, I built a practical horse head rig from a pillow, gaffer tape, A-clamps and a C-stand. For riding sequences, a stool and baby pin wall mounts on a wooden base gave her the correct posture and foot position. Simple, effective, invisible in the final image.
I also left room to be surprised. Some of the strongest frames in this series came from moments I didn't plan, a glance, a shift in posture, something Molly did instinctively that suggested an entirely new scene. That's the negotiation at the heart of every portrait: truth and performance, pulling against each other until something real emerges.
Directing someone who isn't a professional model requires a specific kind of communication. The goal is always authenticity, explaining clearly what you're after and finding the language that gets you there without making the subject self-conscious. Experience with everyone from first-time talent to major celebrities has taught me that the challenge is always the same. The approach has to be tailored every time.
POST-PRODUCTION
After the shoot, I reviewed selects with an open mind, honoring what I'd planned while staying alert to frames that deviated from it in interesting ways. Final selects were siloed from their backgrounds and brought into 3D software as image planes, with CGI environments built around them. The lighting from the live shoot dictated how each environment was lit, the real world and the digital world aligned from the start.
The CGI horses were fully modeled, posed and rendered for every scene. Final compositing was done in Photoshop, with AI enhancement applied selectively, not to alter the content of the images, but to add fine surface detail to areas like the horse's mane. The last step was careful masking to preserve the integrity of the original photography and CGI render beneath the AI layer. The technology serves the image. It never authors it.
THE RESULT
The opening image of this series: Molly rearing up on horseback in the middle of a Montana landscape, storm clouds breaking behind her, the light exactly as I'd imagined it, could not have been made any other way.
Consider what a traditional production might require: a celebrity with no riding experience, a trained stunt coordinator, a location scout finding that exact landscape, a production window hoping the weather cooperated. Weeks of logistics. A budget that reflects it.
This was built in my home studio in the middle of winter.
That is the argument for the hybrid approach. I see something in my mind and want it created exactly as I see it. CGI, AI, and photography used together make that possible, not as a shortcut, but as a creative system that removes the gap between imagination and execution.
CREDITS
Photography, CGI, Art Direction & Post-Production: Dale May
Agent: WSWcreative
Model: Molly Dryman
Cowboy Boots: courtesy of Deena Clawar / botablu.com
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For press inquiries about this project, contact Sarah Hall Productions: info@shpny.com | 212.529.1598
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