Print Break…Photo Club does the Rodeo

OK, we’ll take a little break from the printing talk and talk about an outing that I went on with the Tripod Camera Club (A local camera club I belong to). One of our members (thanks Gene!) thought visiting the local Rodeo (in Waynesville) would be a great opportunity to shoot some action photos. Well, it turned out to be just that, a great photo op. First off, I had no idea we had a local rodeo, and secondly, I had no idea that we had so many cowboys (and cowgirls) in the area. And better yet, they were all serious and riding for cash. I saw a lot of cowboy hats, a lot of bulls & horses and some people getting hauled away by the local paramedics.

I didn’t know what to expect, so I showed up a little early wearing shorts, a tee shirt and a ball cap. Wrong, I needed jeans, boots and a cowboy hat. The people there were very friendly, they made all the room needed for a bunch of camera nuts with long lenses needing to get right up to the fence to snap pictures of all the action & people. I’d love to see what some of the other people shot, we have some very good photographers in this group and I can do nothing but to learn from them. Everything I shot was with a Nikon D200 and a Nikon 18-200 lens. I thought I was doing OK, till Kem (another member) showed me what she was shooting with her new D7000 with an 80-400 lens. From what I could tell, she was isolating these cowboys and bulls from everything else at 150 yards. I bet we’ll see some pretty good shots when competition starts up again this fall.

For me, the most exciting moment came when I slipped on a wide angle lens, and there was a wild bull in the corral (the announcer asked people to stand back from the rail while this bull was out). Well he saw me shooting him, and I don’t think he liked it and came charging in my direction. Through the wide angle lens, he looked like he was 5-8 feet away, but actually he was right on me. I got out of the way, but he had pretty bad breath.

This was a lot of fun. On a day that was overcast all day, the setting sun came out and gave us 30 minutes of perfect evening light to shoot by. We all had Marion’s pizza afterward and I was able to get up and go canoeing by 7:00 Sunday. It’s to bad all the pictures from that trip stunk.

You can see the rest of the Rodeo photos at Green Boat Images Gallery. Another member, Jackie Buck had a pretty good blog post on this event (with great insight & photos), plus she writes about and other photographic related material.