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The photo to the right was taken in the parking lot at the Olympics where she was interviewing the mounted patrol. The vest Susan was wearing was typical of the ones the official photographers for the Olympics had to wear. Susan was at the Olympics shooting the equine disciplines.

My name is Ted Stresen-Reuter and Susan Sexton is my mother. What follows is a combination of my recollections of what it was like growing up with Susan and her thoughts on what it is that makes her stand apart from the rest of the equine photographers. Although she may not see it or agree with it, what she has accomplished in the last 20 years is nothing short of astonishing.

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 12 YEARS OLD, Susan worked as a secretary in order to support me and my 2 sisters. She received a camera for Christmas (a Vivitar with a zoom lens, if I'm not mistaken) and then borrowed $100 for an enlarger and other dark room equipment. Needing a subject on which to practice her new art, she brought her camera to work with her, strapped over her shoulder as she rode her dirt bike to work at a horse stable in Scottsdale, AZ.

I CAN RECALL several Saturday mornings when she would wake up with the sun (or before it) in order to go to the stables in Scottsdale, AZ and shoot shows and/or friends riding their horses. Occasionally, she would drag me along. I soon caught the photography bug too (which has since transformed into Web page lust). Eventually, she decided to try her hand at selling her images to the riders. She met with enough success to pay for the hobby. But, when you compare answering phones and typing letters to shooting and selling photographs of some of the most beautiful and majestic creatures ever to walk the planet, the hobby quickly turned into serious business.

TAKING ADVANTAGE OF WHAT SHE LEARNED working for others, she managed to organize her time (and family) so that she could pursue her dream of becoming the best horse photographer in the U.S., if not the world. Within a few years my sisters and I found ourselves accompanying Susan on weekend jaunts to neighboring towns to shoot horse shows. Susan and I would shoot and develop the film (often staying up all night in an impromptu darkroom set up in a hotel bathroom), Steph and Meg (my two sisters) would sell the images, sometimes enthusiastically, others, as would be expected of any teenager, begrudgingly.

WHEN I TURNED 16, Susan broke the news that she was selling the house, buying a mobile home in which to install an automated photo lab, and basically going on the road to make it big as a horse photographer. My sisters and I were invited to join her. We all had mixed feelings about the endeavor. I just wanted to finish high school. Meg and Steph just didn't want to lose their home. Fortunately for me, I was able to go live with my Dad in Chicago where I graduated from Lincoln Park High in 1983. However, before coming to Chicago, we, Susan, Meg, Steph, and I made a few excursions to New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado in our green Ford F-350 with a 27 foot mobile home, fully equipped with a color processor/dark room in the back.

THIS WAS THE SUMMER OF 1980. The Radio Shack TRS-80 was losing ground to IBMs and for all intents and purposes, VHS was beating out Beta in the video format. Technology was having call waiting and cable television. The color processor installed in the back of the trailer was a behemoth of ceramic rollers, stainless steel chemical tanks, unforgiving stainless steel gears, and a towering, scorching hot stainless steel dryer used to dry the paper as it rolled out of the processor, all enclosed in a chest high, plywood box (except for the towering dryer stuck on one end) and it seemed to us to be a marvel of human ingenuity. Little did we know the revolution the microchip would bring in the years to come. In any case, we were it! We were free. The road was our home, the sun was warm, the past was gone, and life was good. Susan may not have realized her dream of taking the world's best photographs of horses, but it sure did seem that a town called Success was on the horizon.

IN JULY OF THE FOLLOWING YEAR Susan decided to move to the East coast. She had family there and having decided to focus on dressage, she would have more opportunities to work. She lived in Framingham, MA for about 9 years. After the first year the mobile processing lab was installed in the basement of her home in Framingham and there, a respectable business, and reputation as one of the best, began to blossom. The mobile lab had been a great experience for Susan. It taught her to focus on her goals as well as the fundamentals of photography and what makes good business sense.

IN 1990 she moved to Warrenton, VA. Along the road Susan has accomplished the following:

• In a recent survey of 26 horse magazines, her pictures could be found in 20 of them.
• In 1 year of any given magazine, she will have pictures in 8 or 9 of the issues.
• In the Stallion issue of The Chronicle (circulation 30,000), she has more photographs than any other single photographer.
• This is also true in Dressage Today and Hunter and Sport Horse stallion issues.
• Her pictures are regularly used in books, calendars, and catalogs, as well as product advertising and packaging.
• She has over 3000 slides of people in nature and a wide variety of nature subjects in general.
• Her clients include Purina, Ariat, Adequan, Eiser's and Wiese.
• She has approximately 50,000 negatives of horses.

In 2001 Susan moved to Chicago, Ill, where she is currently living.

One of these two is the author of this story, Ted, and the other is his sister, Stephanie. The picture was taken by Susan on a recent visit to Chicago.

Can you tell how comfortable we are in front of the camera after all these years?

All images © Susan Sexton/Galloping Graphics.
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