This is one of my all-time favourite photographs. I took it almost 30 years ago, in the early 1980’s at the Cloverdale Rodeo just outside Vancouver, BC. It was a very hot day. I was fascinated by the boots and stirrups and gear that the men (mostly men) wore. These are working cowboys who compete in events that represent what they do out on the range. Actually, that should probably be in the past tense as a lot of range work is done in trucks now, rather than on horseback.
I printed the image some time around 1984-85 and have had it hung in my house for many years. When I decided to enter it in the Photohaus Exhibition I did not have a digital image to send them. I scanned it using our plain old office scanner and then realised, when I looked at it on the computer, that there had been a lot of dust on the negative when I originally printed it. I was able to clean that up, but left the detail of the horse’s veins on the lower left side behind the rider’s leg. Photohaus printed it well for the show and now I have a new print to hang in my house!
