Boot the Cowboy
“Boot the Cowboy” was shot on April 6, 2013 at the Grand Canyon Ranch, which is located just west of Grand Canyon’s West Rim, close to Meadview, Arizona. ...
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“Boot the Cowboy” was shot on April 6, 2013 at the Grand Canyon Ranch, which is located just west of Grand Canyon’s West Rim, close to Meadview, Arizona. “Boot,” as he calls himself, is a working cowboy on the ranch. The ranch also accommodates a limited number of guests, many who visit the nearby Grand Canyon to the east and Lake Meade to the west.
Boot, who I met for the first time that weekend, is a really cool, friendly person and he was game when I asked him if we can do some shooting. I had my professional gear with me when visiting my family who were on a road trip, but I was naturally more set on shooting in and around the Grand Canyon that weekend. Luckily I also brought a Speedlight with me…
The gear used for the shot was a Nikon D800 with a Nikkor 24-70mm f-2.8G set at 50mm. ISO 100, f-3.5 and 1-500 sec. It was shot in mid-morning so I had somewhat dragging light coming from camera right and had an assistant hold a Nikon Speedlight SB-600 flash to camera left to lighten up the shade and for improved contrast. The image was post-processed in Lightroom 4 and converted to black-and-white using a Nik Silver FX Pro 2 plugin.
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Boot, who I met for the first time that weekend, is a really cool, friendly person and he was game when I asked him if we can do some shooting. I had my professional gear with me when visiting my family who were on a road trip, but I was naturally more set on shooting in and around the Grand Canyon that weekend. Luckily I also brought a Speedlight with me…
The gear used for the shot was a Nikon D800 with a Nikkor 24-70mm f-2.8G set at 50mm. ISO 100, f-3.5 and 1-500 sec. It was shot in mid-morning so I had somewhat dragging light coming from camera right and had an assistant hold a Nikon Speedlight SB-600 flash to camera left to lighten up the shade and for improved contrast. The image was post-processed in Lightroom 4 and converted to black-and-white using a Nik Silver FX Pro 2 plugin.
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Oct, 2013Views
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Awards
Contest Finalist in Beards and Mustaches Photo Contest
Featured
Contest Finalist in Portraits in Black and White Photo Contest
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Superb Composition
Top Choice
Absolute Masterpiece
Peer Award
Outstanding Creativity
Exceptional Contrast
Superior Skill
All Star
Magnificent Capture
Genius
Jaw Dropping
Emotions
Impressed
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AlanJakarta
November 18, 2013
Wonderful mono portrait - shame we cannot see his boots. Congratulations.
Platinum
rmr731
November 18, 2013
Fantastic shot! Love the light and the feel of this. Feel like I'm in the old west! Congrats on being Featured!
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Lostforphotography
November 13, 2015
Beautiful black and white shot. I love it. Really captured a moment here and the story. It is a beauty
Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken at the Grand Canyon Ranch, which is a working ranch located just west of the West Rim of the Grand Canyon, near a town called Meadview, in Arizona. The ranch has a number of working cowboys for their horses and cattle and one of them calls himself "Boot," who to me has the ultimate cowboy look, and genuinely so. As I got to know the ranch's cowboys a bit during the weekend I stayed there, one evening I asked Boot is we could do some portraits the next morning and he was game.Time
It was taken about 10am, when the sun was not too high yet, and it raked the front of the building and his body so it created some nice structure and detail in the photo.Lighting
As I wasn't sure if I'd have an opportunity to shoot people during this trip to the Grand Canyon, where landscape photography naturally rules, I packed a single Speedlight with me, just in case. It was held camera left by a travel companion, short-lightening the cowboy's face. So in this case, interestingly enough, the sun is shining from camera right, the shadow side of his face.Equipment
I shot Boot using a Nikon D800 and a Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G lens at 50mm, f/3.5. I shot RAW, handheld at 1/500s at ISO 100 and with a Nikon SB-600 Speedlight wirelessly triggered by a PocketWizard.Inspiration
I love making portraits of people - particularly environmental portraits - and, of course, the more interesting the person is or looks the more interesting a story you can tell. "Boot" is the real deal and shooting him and some of the other cowboys at the ranch felt more like a documentary shoot than a portrait shoot, but ultimately it's about conveying a story and create emotions in myself and hopefully others who see the photo.Editing
I process everything I do in Lightroom - from raw conversion to touch up and all the adjustments - and then I often use Nik Software's plugins for whenever I need to go beyond Lightroom. In this case I used Nik Silver Efex Pro for the conversion to black-and-white, also fine tuning the look using the Structure function to pull out the surfaces of the leather est, the jeans and the wood around him.In my camera bag
If I go on a shoot and don't have to travel light, I pack a Nikon D810 and a D4, a Nikkor 85mm f/1.4G lens (my favorite glass!), and 24-70mm f/2.8G and a 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II zooms. Depending on what I am shooting, if I need to bring artificial lighting I pack either a Speedlight or for bigger jobs a Profoto Pro-7b battery pack with Pro-B heads and a bunch of modifiers, triggered by PocketWizard wireless triggers.Feedback
I personally love to shoot people using so-called short lighting, meaning that the away-from-the-camera part of their face is the strongest lit. Also having the light coming in from the side, raking the subject, in general pulls out the character of the main subject and the structure of the background. In situations such as this where I had to mix ambient light from the sun with artificial lighting to make the image "pop" and to short-light his face, my recommendation is to simply fix on an f-stop you like for a suitably shallow depth-of-field and then try different shutter speeds to either brighten or darkening the background, to get the balance between the ambient and artificial light you are looking for.
