Price of Freedom: Capturing the Spirit of Wild Horses
Carina Maiwald fell in love with horses the moment she got on one. Since then, she has dedicated her time to photographing them for her photo series “Wild Horses,” which shows the free lives of wild horses.
“I wanted to show a whole new side of horses,” Maiwald told weather.com. “The glorious beauty, but also scarred strength. I tried to visualize the invisible price of freedom.” Her subjects provided her with a range of emotions. “At one moment [horses] can fight each other to death and just minutes later everything seems calm and quiet again.”
Though the origins of these horses in Bosnia remain a mystery, local volunteers have embraced their presence by working to improve public awareness. “It’s a rare opportunity for every nature and wildlife lover to be able to get so close to the horses and [become] a part of the herd – because this is actually what it feels like to visit them,” Maiwald said. They’re different from domesticated horses, said the photographer. “They are absolutely wild and on the other hand they are more gentle than most domesticated horses I’ve met. Their instincts are highly sensitive, [which] makes [it] easy as a human to connect with those animals in body language.”
However, getting access to these horses may be easier than the photographing itself. Maiwald said that the weather was the hardest part about capturing the horses. The fickle weather worried her that she would not be able to capture the “unique charisma” and “incredible energy” of the horses.
“In the mountains [the weather] could change within seconds,” she said. “The sun was shining one moment, but a minute from that, it could already be pouring down rain. It was very hard to protect my camera equipment from [the] unsettled conditions.”
Ideally, Maiwald prefers to take photos during a misty sunrise. “The atmosphere around this time is incredible,” she said. “There’s nothing more beautiful than the first rays of sunlight breaking through trees and fog, while you can hear the sound of horses’ neighing waking up the birds.” But whatever the conditions, the photographer wants to emphasize what the “raw” lives of these horses look like, even if it means standing in the rain.
The German photographer began shooting at an early age. As she grew up, she was unsure of how to combine her passion for photography with her love for horses. “I simply didn’t know such [a] combination exist[ed],” Maiwald said. It was only after she became a graphic designer that she invested more into her passion for photography. But soon after she got her first own horse, everything changed. “Not long after this, I figured out that this is where I belong.”
“[Those] photos aren’t even close to what my recent work looks like, but I felt satisfied trying to capture a horse’s true character,” she said. “I loved being around these animals, working in nature and getting a special connection to them during our session.”
Since then, she’s spent a number of years dedicating her time to begin a photo series focused on the pure and wild nature of horses. “This means I will travel to several wild horse populations around the globe,” she said. Her first trip landed her in Bosnia where she met with a horse expert who showed her to the wild herds in the mountains. According to Maiwald, these herds have survived through 60 years of hot summers and freezing winters. “They are completely free and their life depends on themselves.”
Maiwald plans to travel the world for a couple of years to work on this series. “I want to create a personal homage to these incomparable creatures, who for most people, are a symbol of trust, joy and hope,” she said. “This is my way of paying back—showing the world—that they do also enlighten many other people’s lives.”
“We aren’t that different from them. We go through peaks and valleys, doubt in our darkest moments and shine in our brightest. We feel pain and we cause pain. We break and we heal. We cry. We love. We live—just like wild horses,” she said. “Horses are much tougher than most people think and this is what I wanted to express from my photos: bright perfection in the most unlikely places.”
Originally posted by The Weather Channel