A Day at the Rodeo: Post Processing of Two Pictures Welcomed!

[James Newman]

I know I have not posted in awhile but I have been visiting fairly regularly just to stay up with what's going on. Life has proven very hectic and it's priorities have not aligned with mine for some time now. I have made a promise to myself to get out more and to take my camera with me so yesterday I got started down that path. Nothing special, just me getting back in the groove so to speak, swinging my camera around again.

My wife and I visited the La Fiesta de los Vaqueros, the Tucson Rodeo, 2013 edition yesterday at the Tucson Rodeo Arena. It was a beautiful but awfully bright and sunny 75 degree winter's day. Sometimes you have no say in the matter as far as time of day for shooting. The cowboys and cowgirls were all giving their best efforts and there was excitement all through the program. From the smallest 4 year old trying to hang on to a crazy running sheep in the mutton bustin competition all the way to the pro riders on the huge and angry bucking bulls. Being from Texas, rodeo has always been a part of my life so getting back out to one was a blast for me.

This is one of the photos that I liked the most. It shows that both, the young girl riding, as well as her horse, are really intent on doing their best.
I have not posted a photo in so long I hope I can remember the proper way to do it. Hopefully this works. James
Edited - after posting the first image I noticed a quite horrible remnant or artifact of some kind that I had not seen before. I will have to take a look at that image again and try to figure out what happened. I replaced with a couple of different ones. Sorry.

James is open to those with retouching enthusiasm and skills to optimize these pictures and post below!

Just disclose methods you use and provide him, on request, the layered files, if you are using photoshop. All resulting files are © James Newman in return for sharing files for this exercise Download files here.

 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Hi James,

Good to have you back.

I really like the action shot of the little girl. Amazing how she manages to stay in (on top of) the saddle, and remains in full control. They must be a great team, the horse must be very sensitive to her signals.

The difficulty with an image such as of the bucking horse, good timing by the way, is that the Depth of Field at that shooting distance makes it difficult to separate the main subject from the surroundings. If it is a special image to someone, one could improve that in post-processing but it would take some time and skill to do in a natural way.

Cheers,
Bart

 

[Asher Kelman]

I know I have not posted in awhile but I have been visiting fairly regularly just to stay up with what's going on. Life has proven very hectic and it's priorities have not aligned with mine for some time now. I have made a promise to myself to get out more and to take my camera with me so yesterday I got started down that path. Nothing special, just me getting back in the groove so to speak, swinging my camera around again.

James,

I can't tell you enough how delighted I am to see you "back in the saddle", so to speak. Welcome back!

My wife and I visited the La Fiesta de los Vaqueros, the Tucson Rodeo, 2013 edition yesterday at the Tucson Rodeo Arena. It was a beautiful but awfully bright and sunny 75 degree winter's day. Sometimes you have no say in the matter as far as time of day for shooting. The cowboys and cowgirls were all giving their best efforts and there was excitement all through the program. From the smallest 4 year old trying to hang on to a crazy running sheep in the mutton bustin competition all the way to the pro riders on the huge and angry bucking bulls. Being from Texas, rodeo has always been a part of my life so getting back out to one was a blast for me.

Never experienced a rodeo yet. I'd like that. It's so different from bullfighting!! Seems to go well with beer and hotdogs and has not cruel spearing of the bulls to allow some slim tones fancy-suited dude to ceremoniously kill it before a roaring crowd.

This is one of the photos that I liked the most. It shows that both, the young girl riding, as well as her horse, are really intent on doing their best.

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Fabulous family fun! I hope to see this someday. The kids holding on to sheep has to be precious! I agree with Bart's suggestion on further possible post-processing. One might want to bring out the dust cloud and render the b.g. believably OOF because of movement and focus on the horse and it's spunky rider!

Asher

 

[James Newman]

Thanks Bart. The inability to separate the subject from the background was a concern for me but with only the 70-200 that I was using and the distance I was sitting from the action, there really was not much I could do. Perhaps a 600mm or even th new Nikon 800mm would be the solution to this problem. The cowboys in the background were interesting subjects themselves in some of my catches with their facial expressions and such. They really get into watching and rooting for their fellow competitors. Here are a couple of more just for grins.

 

[Chris Calohan]

You might want to try a neutral density filter.

 

[Asher Kelman]

James is open to those with retouching enthusiasm and skills to optimize these pictures and post below!

Just disclose methods you use and provide him, on request, the layered files, if you are using photoshop. All resulting files are © James Newman in return for sharing files for this exercise Download files here.