A Girl and Her Horse...

Last weekend I was assigned a story about three generations of women barrel racing at the same event. It sounded interesting enough. When I got there I found out the focus of the story had changed since just the youngest was racing. That ended up making the story a little better photo-wise. I was afraid I was going to show up and shoot a bad portrait of the three of them standing by a horse and then wait to shoot individual action shots of each of them. This one was better I got to get some photos of Bree as she got her horse warmed up and talk to her mom and grandmother during the process. The great part about it was she was the third rider in the competition so I was able to shoot her race. After the race she had pretty much forgotten about me being there and as she was walking her horse back to its trailer she stopped and gave it a kiss. It was a really sweet moment. When I was shooting it, it was one of those rare moments I knew I had the shot I wanted to use. Then I look at my camera an notice it was white balanced for the arena. Ugh! I had also had the ISO jacked up pretty high. I cringed looking at it in the LCD screen. Luckily it wasn't too blown out, just the background (which actually helped clean things up). When I got back to the office I was able to fix it pretty well. Then I noticed it was going on a black and white page. It's not often I change my photos to black and white. But after seeing this in print it really does work a lot better for these photos.

Honoring a Hero and Bucking Bulls...

For the second year in a row the InVinci-Bull Youth Bull Riding World Finals came to Abilene to showcase some of the best young bull riders in the country. This is a really fun event to shoot. They start out wit kids under 8-years-old competing in mutton busting and move up from there to the steers and the 15-18 year olds ride real bulls. I think I'd have to say my favorite group was the 10-13 year olds. There was no short of emotions and celebrations after a really good ride. Between kids coming off their steer and throwing their helmet in the air to jumping around after a really stellar ride, it was something you just don't see at regular bull riding events.

One really cool thing that I saw at the start of the event that I wasn't expecting was they honored a Marine who had lost both of his legs from a road-side bomb while serving in Iraq. It was a pleasant surprise to see them genuinely honoring this man and his fellow Marines. I ended up with two shots I really liked. The one of him walking out did a good job of highlighting his artificial limbs. But, I think I liked the one of him standing in front of his fellow Marines with all of them rim lit. All of the elements just seemed to work out right between the light on the men in the back. anyone who has ever seen the Marines knows the outline of the uniform and the hats. Plus with him up front, his body language looks like a proud man, who is humbled to be honored, plus again, it highlights the artificial limbs. It was a nice moment to see before seeing the riders being thrown from the steers and bulls.

High School Rodeo Finals...

Somehow this year I didn't spend nearly as much time shooting the high school rodeo finals as I had in the past. I did get to shoot the Saturday night short round. This one is always fun because the top finishers in these events are the ones who make the national team and get to compete in Wyoming at the national finals rodeo. That's what makes shooting the Saturday night go-round so much fun, since there is so much emotion among the winners, plus since it's their last chance they're usually going for broke and leaving it all out there. Makes for good times and some decent images.

An Exceptional Rodeo...

On my way back to Eastland for the second game of baseball between Wylie and Mineral Wells I was assigned to shoot the Exceptional Kids Rodeo at the Cowboy Heritage Church in Clyde. It was a fun little event where special needs kids get to try out some of the events and be a rodeo cowboy for a couple hours. Of course, the events were a little different than what you'd see at a real rodeo, but they were a lot safer too. Like, the roping used roping dummies instead of real calves and the "bucking events" were using the practice devices too, but it was obvious the kids were having fin. Plus, they did get to ride real horses and meet real cowboys and rodeo queens. It was a fun event to be able to capture the fun that these kids were having.

Cowboy Reunion...

For my photo column last week I went up to Stamford to shoot the rodeo at the Texas Cowboy Reunion. It's a really cool event that's been going on up there for 80+ years and for the folks who go, both the spectators and competitors, it's a yearly tradition. Now, I've covered the parade before the event and the fiddlers contest and Saturday events before, but I'd never been to the rodeo before. Not sure why, but it's something I've always seemed to have missed. I ended up getting to the event about an hour early, since I had to shoot and transmit photos from the parade for the next day's paper.

After running into quite a few people I met during Stamford's run to state in baseball, I went to the back and poked around checking out the competitors and seeing what kind of behind the scenes stuff I could get into. It was cool because it allowed me to talk to a lot of folks about the event without bothering them during the rodeo, since I also had to write a short story to go with the photo page. After talking to many of them the theme was the same, pretty much everyone I talked to had been coming here every year "for as long as I can remember." Well, that was easy enough, I knew what I was writing about. And after a couple of hours I had a bunch of nice images that I was happy with.

High School Rodeo...

I spent s few days hanging out at the rodeo shooting my photo column. It's always kind of nice to go somewhere without any real expectations. This year's finds didn't turn out quite as nice as the ones I got from last year, mostly because I didn't have as much time to walk around but I still ended up getting a few shots I liked. Then I went and shot the saddle bronc event on Saturday night and got a few nice shots of riders getting thrown off their horses. I guess since Saturday was the finals they saved the meanest horses for last because it seemed like nearly every one of the riders was getting tossed from their horses. That may not have been what the riders wanted but it sure made for some pretty fun images.

Cowboy Billy Bob...

This is a story we were doing about Billy Bob Brown, a kid from our area, Carbon, Texas, who was going to the National High School Rodeo Finals. It's not totally uncommon for a kid from our area to go nationals, however, when the kid was born with only one lung and nearly died when he was born it makes the story a little better. That angle made for the story being kind of cool, but didn't really mean much for me shooting pictures.

One interesting thing about him was how much time he spends away from home. I had to go find him at a rodeo in Seymour, about 100 miles north of Abilene. What was interesting was he told me this was his sixth rodeo in 3 days! And, he and his roping partner Chace Thompson had been away from home for a week and weren't going to be back home for another two weeks! After the Seymour rodeo they were going to spend the night at Chace's house (which was only about 30 minutes south of Seymour) and then go to Oklahoma for a week before going to Wyoming for another week before finally coming home. It was pretty cool to hear how it worked, I knew the professional rodeo cowboys spent a lot of time on the road, but these guys just finished high school!

It was pretty cool hanging out with him and getting a behind the scenes look at how rodeo cowboys work. I've shot plenty of rodeos over the last 10 years but it's mostly just competition. With these guys I spent most of my time watching them getting ready and waiting for their competition. The competition parts only lasted about 3 total minutes. The rest of it was observing what exactly they do while waiting to compete. Most of it is cutting up with other cowboys to kill time.

High School Rodeo...

Last week was the annual Texas High School Rodeo finals. I used to hate shooting it, thinking it was much of the same thing a lot. And, as far as stories go, it was. We constantly cover many of the same things every year. But, for my photo column which started last week, the only requirement I had to follow was I needed to fill up a photo page. This makes it both fun and tedious at the same time. It's at the point where the weather is pushing 100 every day. So, spending time outside isn't exactly something I look forward to, but many of the best photos are in the horse barns, which are not air conditioned. I didn't have nearly as much time as I usually get to wander around looking for photos, but I was able to track down enough for a photos page and a few that I liked.

A roller girl and her horse....

This is something I found this weekend. I was walking around the Taylor County Expo Center looking for features for a story about the American Junior Rodeo event that was in town for the weekend. I was actually looking for two photos, one for news, one for sports. The one for sports wouldn't be all that hard, just needed a nice action shot. Those are easy enough to find, just go to the right event. But, for news I needed something more featurey than action. So, I was walking around the horse stalls looking for whatever I could find, kids preparing their horses, saddling them, whatever I came across. That's when I saw this little kids walking (at least that's what it looked like from a far) across the parking lot. She had a sweatshirt on an her hat pulled down low on her head , but something about it looked funny. When she got closer I figured it out... she was wearing roller skates. Score! I grabbed a few shots as she rolled by me. After talking to her and her mom it was kind of funny. They told me they were from Junction, and lived out in the country and didn't have paved roads near their home so whenever she is near the pavement, often at rodeos, she pretty much has her roller skates glued to her feet when she's not competing. Well, that was easy, I knew I had my feature shot!

Fair Week and the Rodeo

Fair week, not a whole lot to say, it's one of those things I've both despised and and enjoyed at different times over my nine years here. Last year was one that I enjoyed, before that I leaned closer to the despise side. I think this year the pendulum has swung closer to the liked side. I think a lot of it depends on how many assignments I have there that week and what they are.

This year wasn't too bad, most of my fair time was spent working on a photo page for the end of the week, instead of shooting stories on how to make a funnel cake (this was an actual story one year!). I also, shot sneak-a-peek, the opening night of the fair rides, the bubble gum blowing contest, and the rodeo. Those don't bother me because all have potential of making good pix (unlike the making of the funnel cake story).

There are a few great things about having a photo page to work on. 1) I can spend my free time out of the office instead of in front of my computer archiving photos, well that's great until I fill my hard drive. 2) The deadline is the end of the week, so I'm not in a hurry, I can take my time . Taking my time leads to boredom, which leads to trying to find something quick and letting the creative juices flow. Boredom can be a good thing. 3) Cheesecake on a stick, yum. Nuff Said. 4) At a time that news hole at most newspapers is shrinking like George Costanza's, ahem , in a swimming pool, I get a full page to do whatever I want with! The only drawback was we had a photog on vacation so I didn't get to spend as much time as I really wanted, but I still made time to get out there and enough cheesecake on a stick I mean, photos... to fill my belly, I mean page.

The fair rodeo is a freelance job. A friend who is on the rodeo committee asked me to shoot it for them a couple years ago, and I guess I did ok, because they keep asking me back -- this was my third year to shoot it.

The great thing about working for the people who are running the rodeo is access. The first year it was ok, I was pretty much feeling out what exactly they were looking for and the better places to shoot. This year, I was able to get the bread and butter shots they want, and then some. Basically I was able to go where ever I wanted to shoot from as long as I wasn't in the way or in danger. Which meant outside of roughstock events I could shoot from the arena floor. The shot below is the winner of the mutton bustin competition giving the rodeo queen a kiss after winning a new pair of cowboy boots for his victory.