Out there
Jun, 2015Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This was taken at a rodeo in Victoria and is part of the steer wrestling event. Tony, the cowboy needs to jump off his horse at speed, grab the steer and wrestle it to the ground. This takes great timing, great horsemanship, a certain amount of strength and lots of luck. The hazer is there to try and keep the steer running in a straight line.Time
This is one of my favourite images as it captures the cowboy airborne before he hits the ground, shows the dust in the arena and the strength required to get the job done. This was mid afternoon on a hot sunny day.Lighting
Not the greatest time of day for shooting photos as the sun was streaming down but I was using spot metering on the horse and rider combination.Equipment
This was shot on a Canon 5d MKIII using a 70-200 zoom.Inspiration
I was wanting to show the action and sheer hard work that goes into this event and was very happy with what I captured. If I had managed to get only one image that day, this was the one I loved.Editing
I don't usually do a lot of post processing, other than maybe adjusting the exposure and a bit of straightening. With this I pulled out a few shadows as well as cropping it slightly and that was about it.In my camera bag
My bag typically has both my cameras, Canon 5d and Canon 7d along with heaps of charged batteries, memory cards and air and brush for cleaning. With rodeo photography I am usually sitting close to the arena and manage to get very covered in dust so I also have a small towel to protect the camera when not in use. I have the 70-200 lens on the 5D and a 24-70 on the 7D so that I am not changing lenses in the dust and use 32gb cards so that I can get away without changing cards through the day.Feedback
Probably the best advice I was given for this sort of photography is to observe it first. For example with the steer wrestling, understand what direction the competitors will be coming from and what is going to be the best angle for you to be positioned to get the type of shot you want. This then helps to determine where you will position yourself and what settings you will use. If it is a night rodeo, the lighting (or lack of it) will play with you as it changes all the time and is not designed to assist photography. Fast shutter speeds to freeze the action, although if they are coming at you like in this shot 1/500 is usually plenty.
