I had the distinct pleasure of shooting the Austin Rodeo again last week. This is becoming an annual treat that I very much look forward to and this year’s show was definitely worth seeing.
Although I’ve been in Texas for the best part of 20 years, the whole rodeo thing still feels fabulously exotic to me. Growing up 7000 miles away from the wild west and cowboy culture, all this stuff was utterly remote – weird happenings only ever seen in movies or on the TV and certainly not something you would ever come across in or around Glasgow. I’m fairly sure Americans traveling to Scotland feel exactly the same way about Highland Games, though, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.
I’ll have several more shots taken in the arena or surrounding carnival over the next week. I wanted to start with a bull rider, though, which is, in my opinion, the highest machismo-rated activity in rodeo. These bulls don’t take prisoners as one of the rodeo clowns found out as he was tossed 10 feet into the air by one somewhat irate bovine on the night I was there. And no – I didn’t get a photo of that 🙁
By the way, for those of you not conversant in rodeo, the title refers to the fact that a rider must stay on the bull or horse for 8 seconds to achieve a score. If you fall off before this, you don’t get credit for the ride.