If you look very closely, you can see an airborne steer!

I don’t often shoot this way, from so far away, but it makes it fun to try and think about compositions on a grander scale.  My friend from graduate school, Uwe Martin, was a master at this (check out the second image in his Bangladesh story).  He would make a composition and then just wait for the moment.  I usually get impatient.

Notice the vertical leap of a 2500 lb bull.

This a an unhappy one-ton animal with large horns trying to get a crazy, 165-lb cowboy with large cojones off his back.  This is especially impressive up close.

I picked dirt from my teeth after this shot.

Blake is the sponsored steer wrestler for the Let 'er Buck cologne campaign I've been working on for Brewhouse Studio. This photograph was made a few minutes before he competed in this year's Pendleton Round-Up.

The Pendleton Round-Up is manliness, history, dust, athleticism, buckle-bunnies, whiskey, friendship, and pure excitement for four days every year.  Brewhouse Studio rented a 300 foot RV, bought 15 pairs of old cowboy boots, and packed up the creative paraphernalia from 6 months of work and headed east to launch our biggest campaign to date.  I had perhaps one of the more enviable jobs of our stay, photographing the craziness of the bucking, roping, throwing, and racing from quite close.  During the bull riding I got a mouthful of sod.

This might be my favorite image I made while there.  I shot it thinking about Sam Abell’s image of the Canadian fishermen.