Nikon D5, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, ISO 64000, ƒ/2.8, 1/2500

These barrel racers come out of the gate at full speed and take their horse through a clover-leaf pattern around preset barrels in the fastest time. Keeping up with these animals was challenging.

I would shoot when I could see the rider’s face. Due to where you are standing with the camera, the horse and rider are facing away from you more than half of the time. Picking your moments was tough. If I were to do this again, I might even use remote cameras to give me more viewpoints.

The cowgirls are just as good with roping a calf. Breakaway roping is a variation of calf roping where a calf is roped but not thrown and tied. There is a split second where you can capture the moment where the calf is roped.

A little side note here. The cowgirls outperformed the cowboys when it came to roping at this rodeo. The cowboys missed more than the cowgirls, which lets me know women are showing more and more today their athleticism in our culture.

Team roping, known as heading and heeling, is a rodeo event that features a steer (typically a Corriente) and two mounted cowboy riders. The time of this event is just seconds. Times on the roping events are in the seconds. For the cowgirl breakaway, roping, the winner was 2.7 seconds.

Bull Riding is the wildest and most dangerous event in rodeo. In the American tradition, the rider must stay atop the bucking bull for eight seconds to count as a qualified ride. The rider tightly fastens one hand to the bull with a long braided rope. It is a risky sport and has been called “the most dangerous eight seconds in sports.”

The bulls are rated and even more famous in many ways than the cowboys who ride them. This bull here had 27 consecutive buck-offs; now that is 28. A cowboy must stay on the bull 8 seconds for the ride to count. Then they get a score that considers the bull they are riding.

When a bull is determined unrideable every once in a while, the Professional Bull Riders Association has a million-dollar ride. At $125,000 per second, this bonus ride offers one of the largest payouts any athlete has ever received for the time they are required to compete. In comparison, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo received roughly 12 million dollars to play in 15 NFL games in 2013.  At 54,000 seconds per season, it took Romo 4,500 seconds to make $1 million.

Take Aways

As you can see, 2.5 sec is a short time to get your photo in the breakaway roping. You don’t have time to wait to frame your shot. You don’t have time to check your focus. You must have the gear that will allow you to focus on the event.

The combination of my Nikon D5 and the Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S was perfect for this event. The composition changes so quickly with these events that a fixed lens would have been too tight or too loose. The ability to zoom soon and get the essential parts of the event in the photo was possible because the 120-300mm range worked perfectly for the rodeo.