Photoclubalpha

I went to a Western rodeo to feed my craving for action photography. I hadn't done this before, and I learned some important lessons. I tried to avoid the typical rodeo action photos with the highly cluttered backgrounds. However, I learned there are almost no lines of sight without a mess of fences, vehicles, advertising signs, and rodeo people immediately behind the action subject. Rodeo officials do not allow photographers to better frame their shots by climbing into the stock pens or entering the arena with the worked-up bulls. On the plus side, I did find that using an ephemeris with an arena plan, and paying $10 extra, reserved me a seat at front-row, ground-level, with the sun aligned at my back. Luck also gave me more than an hour of diffused sun light before the clouds parted. I also found that a tele-zoom is essential for this type of photography, and the photographer has to be nimble on the zoom. Finally, freezing motion is nice, but some motion blur would better portray the action. The down side of motion blur, however, is that the really exciting events, such as bronc riding and bull riding, have motion in many directions at once, producing blur without one line of flow and without any sharper sections of interest, such as the faces of animals and people. Nonetheless, my few experiments with motion blur (not shown here) were an interesting start (for me), so I'll be practicing more of this at the next rodeo.
All photos were taken with the Sony a900 and Sony 70-400mm f/4-5.6 G Lens.

1. Modern bull rider wearing ice hockey head gear. Here's a quandary: the white line near photo-center is bull mucus, which traces the trajectory of the leaping, rotating bull. It is easy to remove with Photoshop. Should I leave it in the photo for its reality, or is the eeeeuuuwww effect too great?


2. Traditional cowboy bull rider. In this image I used Photoshop in a rudimentary attempt to blur the background clutter.


3. Two rodeo bullfighters (aka rodeo clowns) distract the bull as the bull rider runs to safety.

In this event, the rodeo bullfighters rescued a number of bull riders from aggressive bulls. (See http://cubit.smugmug.com/Rodeo/Rodeo-Bu ... 865_DnJFKX )

I think you did a fantastic job for a first try ! I'd leave them all just the way they are, very authentic. What an interesting subject. I can see how it would be hard to figure out what to focus on. Well done !

Very exciting series John - nice pictures .

The second shot is awesome.

Great stuff, all four feet in the air at once and great dof as well.
Greg

John, as a photographer interested in rodeo ... are you aware of the work of Louise L. Serpa?

Absolutely splendid! Were these at 400mm or less?

John David Cubit wrote: Here's a quandary: the white line near photo-center is bull mucus, which traces the trajectory of the leaping, rotating bull. It is easy to remove with Photoshop. Should I leave it in the photo for its reality, or is the eeeeuuuwww effect too great?

Personally, I'd remove it. May be authentic but spoils the composition IMHO

artington wrote:Absolutely splendid! Were these at 400mm or less?

Thanks! In order, they were at 300, 400, 300mm, and included a fair amount of cropping (thanks to the full frame sensor on the a900). This is the first time I have used the zoom for action photography. Normally I use a 300mm or 600mm prime. The subject is flying birds, and my main activity is tracking the subject and pressing the shutter. When I mentioned having to be nimble on the zoom, I was serious. I am not used to using the zoom in action photography to optimize framing as the subject rapidly changes distance from the camera. It is something new to practice, practice, practice....

Great action shots from the Rodeo!

The mucus doesn't bother me since it's about the fierceness of the moment...

Well done.

Yildiz