The Bronco Buster

This is the California Rodeo, Salinas, California, and if this photo appears to be a cliche, it's because this 'pose' is the one that is most emblematic of 'bucking bronco' symbols -- one most likely to be immortalized on a statue, I think, or perhaps a pin or emblem.

 

John (Crosley)

'The Bronco Buster' is the prototypical and maybe even cliched image

of a cowboy doing his 'job', at the Salinas, California rodeo, one

of the largest rodeos in the United States. Your ratings and

critiques are invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly or very

critically, please submit a helpful and constructive comment/Please

share your superior photographic knowledge to help improve my

photography. Thanks! Enjoy! John

The staff and patrons at Salinas Rodeo were among the most friendly people one could hope to meet.

 

The press office reviewed my portfolio on line and gave me a press pass based on my images, for which I am most thankful, but this photo was essentially taken from the 'stands'.

 

Though I was standing -- I could as easily have been sitting down as a spectator (which I might well have preferred).

 

Lens was a 70~200 mm Nikkor with a 1.4 x tele-extender on a Nikon D200 at 200 mm full extension x .4 = 280 mm x a 1.5 crop factor for use on a digital camera for a very substantial telephoto compression. It was fully adequate for the the task.

 

This is a slight crop. I learned from a previous night, to shoot a little 'large' since if a cowboy gets bucked off or thrown by a bull, he disappears from the frame if one crops too tightly in the camera, and I lost some good shots because of too tight cropping when bulls threw some cowboys (and got just their feet hanging from heaven high above the bull, for 'mysterious' photos.

 

Rodeo is one place in which one must crop a little 'loosely' in case someone gets thrown out of the 'frame' one is seeing, and then 'crop' later if the action remains within the frame.

 

John (Crosley)

This photo features a subject laid out in a giant 'S' curve, which draws the viewer's eye from the front of the horse's open, gasping, fighting mouth to the tip of his tail, with a viewer's stop at the cowboy's chaps as they fly with his legs off the horse's back -- all in all, a very dynamic 'S' curve of the sort usually seen leading off into the woods, turned sideways, and framed by cropping and anything but bucolic as in most 'S' curve photos.

 

Actually, although this capture was overlarge for the subject before cropping; the dimensions were the same, with identical amounts taken off in cropping from all four sides. The horse was 'dead center' in the original capture.

 

John (Crosley)

This started out as a color photo, so why not present it in color?

 

The reason is simple. I post color photos in color where the color seems to help or not detract from the overall depiction. Here the color of the dirt, everywhere -- foreground and background -- confused with the color of the horse, rider and even his costume, creating some confusion and creating a less than satisfactory color photo for the good lines of the photo.

 

By converting to B&W (in this case using Photoshop's channel mixer, checking the monochrome box, and fiddling with the color balance) I was able to emphasize the muscles of the horse, bring them out and emphasize the lines of the reverse 'S' curve which comprises the totality of this photo and which shows the power of the horse, compared with the precariousness of the rider (but also his skill, for he seems to be firmly attached, even if his right leg somehow has crossed over the horse's back to the left side).

 

All in all, I don't even think I would present this as a color photo unless there were a special request, but as a B & W photo it is seems to be a success -- some photos were meant to be color and some were meant to be B&W, while some can exist as both.

 

Pity Henri Cartier-Bresson who felt so badly about his color work he tried publicly to destroy it, and even when presented with his color work (portions) in a Parisian restaurant by one long-time friend, a photo editor of great repute, flew into a rage, and tried to grab the photos and destroy them on the spot, then went around the restaurant denigrating the editor to each of the diners. . . . .

 

At least sometimes I can control color shooting . . . and in that, I have one up on the maitre. ;-)) (true story from a French photography magazine's obituary shortly after H C-B's death, as told by the editor himself in a personal remembrance.)

 

John (Crosley)

The prototypical American 'cowboy' is portrayed by sculptor Frederic Remington in his only full-size sculpture, in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park (facing West, appropriately), but showing a cowboy and his horse more in symbiosis than here.

 

If this figure seems a little 'familiar' to you, consider all the rodeo posters and memorabilia that must have featured figures such as this, and then look on the web for Remington's 'cowboy', which you'll find is a bit different.

 

In fact, this is the antithesis of Remington's steed -- he indeed is NOT subservient to his cowpoke, and perhaps never will be.

 

John (Crosley)

Great shot John. About the only thing I would remark here is my personal preference for catching the horse at the near top of the bucking arc, easily noticed by the horse's tail being up in the air, and usually completely airborne.

For a few minutes there I thought this might be a forum of one. In a way it is the quintessential rodeo shot, at least until you start thinking about the cowgirls. ;-)

 

I may be wrong as I often am but it looks like you did some tonal adjustments and failed to select the bit of background between the horses front legs. Maybe its just my monitor. This is a pretty nice action shot but I would like even tighter framing than what you have shown here. I do agree with the wide framing advice having attempted to take some photos of calf roping.

There was some slight 'tonal adjustment' in contrast and brightness made, but it also included the area between the horse's legs (I didn't overlook that -- and it was all done in one adjustment -- it just stands out for no particular reason -- maybe I could go in and de-emphasise it if it stands out, but it's absolutely 'natural'.

 

Tonal adjustments, were applied with shadow/highlight tool, which doesn't take into account 'selecting' anything.

 

I still go for the wider view -- I like a wider view of a cowboy on a bronco -- it suggests that the horse has 'some place to go, and might very well go there at any second'.

 

And I am glad you agree with my 'loose framing on shooting' advice and that your calf roping experience bore that out. I wish someone had given me a brief tutorial before I began shooting, but I learned extremely quickly, and I had multi-day access, so I lost nothing.

 

Thanks for the critique/comment.

 

John (Crosley)

Time after time, on occasions when I view people viewing my portfolio on line, very frequently they will select this image to view 'large' -- literally to gaze at for a while.

 

I always wondered why.

 

Of course it is an action photo, involves an animal and is full of life, so that may explain part of it; I have captured that well, but I always wondered whether it was a particularly good photograph from an artistic point of view -- how would it stand up to critical analysis -- how would a critic analyse it?

 

I just glanced at it, in viewing my portfolio thumbnails and it struck me.

 

This photo embodies, through by connecting the hooves, the legs of the horse, the legs of the rodeo rider and his contorted body, one perfect 'S' curve.

 

An 'S' curve is one of the most interesting figures in all of photography, for it draws the viewer's eye into and absorbs it, but one usually contends with an 'S' curve when one is viewing a scene where the 'S' curve leads into the distance -- usually the horizon.

 

For instance, I have posted an almost perfect 'S' curve in my 'landscapes' which is prototypical of the use of an 'S' curve. It is actually a "reverse 'S' curve" but no matter. It appears on a section of Interstate 80 in central Wyoming, and the central part of the 'S' curve is only 'implied' because it is cut off by part of a hill/mountain, but because we 'know' that highways are connected, we 'know the curve is a whole, and thus our eye completes the 'S' curve in that photo.

 

Here, the 'S' curve is fully laid out for us to see, but our eye must make the connection from horse's hoof to rider's head -- not a hard thing to do, but for me it was not so apparent that hidden in that was the continual line of an 'S' curve.

 

Of course, that is what holds this entire photo together -- that particular line - more than anything, I think, and if it has 'magic' or 'artistic appeal' that accounts for it.

 

People have all seen a surfeit of 'bucking bronco' photos and such photos are rather common. I have just taken one or two; this is one of them and perhaps the last -- who knows? I try to do whatever I do well, even if it's a new subject, as this one was.

 

I'm interesting in posting 'interesting photos' and find that the most interesting are those that usually also have what Cartier-Bresson called 'geometry' but is what we generally call 'composition'. The centering of the bronco/rider combination, the action and the placement of the 'S' curve in this which holds this composition together, it now has dawned on me, account in large part for the success of this photo.

 

The less apparent 'S' curve.

 

Of course, if one looks close and stretches the concept of the 'S' curve a tad, one can also view a second 'S' curve -- an action-packed one.

 

That is one from the nose of the horse to his tail.

 

Thus, this is a photo in which two 'S' curves intersect -- something compositionally I had not noticed, at least formally, or been able to analyze, until now.

 

I am completely sure that the intersection of those two very dynamic compositional elements within the melding of these two antagonistic mammals, are what account for its appeal to those viewers I have seen attracted to it.

 

Am I correct? I am interested in others' views.

 

John (Crosley)