What you need: 🌟 Tripod 🤳 Phone, clicker, remote, or other way to take photos from distance with camera (self timer!) 📷 Manual camera - ability to set f-stop, ISO, and shutter speed 📷 Zoom lens - I used my "kit" 55-300mm zoom lens. This helps bring your subject into focus compared to background 🦄 Pretty horse 🏠 Barn or other dark area 🌞🌥️ Midday sun - I had a cloudy day which helped 💻 computer with some editing software. I used Photoshop - GIMP is open access and works fine as well! I also think I could have done most of this on my phone, in reality, once the photos were downloaded from my camera.

Set up

Set up your scene. Removing buckets, bridles, etc from the foreground helps! I didn't go a great job of this and I had to do clean up later in editing.
Groom your horse/braid/etc
Set your camera up 30 ft (10m) or so away. Put a bucket or something where your horse will be to test out settings.
Midday works well - no sun shining into the barn but also want some shine on the horse. It will depend on which direction your barn faces.

Settings

Set your f-stop to f-4 or f-5.6. Narrower brings more into focus (higher the number is narrower)
Set your shutter speed to slightly underexpose the image. I used 1/800th.
Set your ISO to something 500-1000. I went with 1000. Higher ISO will allow for less light, so just test a couple shots to decide.

Taking the shot

I set my phone up to remotely take the photo on my camera.
Bring horse into view. Front on can be nice, or 3/4 with some body showing.
Bring cookies or something to get your horses' attention. Keep taking photos and try different things!

Post processing Photoshop, GIMP, Lightroom all work great!

Increase shadows, alter highlights to look the way you want. Also play with blacks and whites to make sure you get some highlights but also shadow in the background.
Contrast, saturation, vibrance all help here as well. Just don't ramp them up too much or it looks fake.
Remove any stray objects in the background. You can use the heal, remove, or clone tools to do this. I also had to remove some stuck bedding!
Crop to the right size for what you want.

Ta-da you have gorgeous images! 🌟🔥💙🌶️