I had a short conversation with the parents of a former rodeo contestant who retired after having his face kicked in by a bull.  They told me that their son, who had competed in a number of sports, used to say that there was no rush comparable to an eight second ride on the back of a bull.  I believe that.  These animals are HUGE – 2,000 pounds of twisting, slashing fury – and they have absolutely no regard for the safety of the cowboys on their backs.  As one of the cowboys said, at least the horses have some sense of rapport with humans.  The bulls would just as soon kill you.

Here, a bull spins out of the chute:

It’s hard to predict what he’s going to do, but sometimes he’s just going to go vertical:

And sometimes he’s going to throw you off like you’re a rag doll… and then he’s going to try to trample you:

It is not, however, all about the bulls. There are also equally wild rides on horses, both with and without saddles. Here is a cowboy coming out of the chute:

Sometimes the rides are almost balletic:

And sometimes it’s just hanging on for dear life:

There are calf-roping events:

And an event where a cowboy jumps off the back of a perfectly good horse and tries to wrestle a steer to the ground:

Sometimes it works… and sometimes it comes up a draw:

Women compete in two events – calf-roping and the barrel race:

And behind it all is a value system grounded in church and nation – the devotion to country is palpable:

Superstition Mountains Haze

Tortilla Flat

A New Friend

Lake Pontchartrain late in the afternoon.

An egret nesting in Audubon Park.

The Oak Alley Plantation in Lutcher, Louisiana

The Hale Boggs Bridge over the Mississippi River near Luling, Louisiana

I don’t know which came first – the cemetery or the Dow Chemical St. Charles plant.  Hahnville, Louisiana.

Stephen, hard at work.

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Meet Harvey.  I love this dog, who I met for the first time at Thanksgving.  He had been brutally abused and was living on the streets in Taiwan when he was rescued by an organization called Animal Rescue Team Taiwan.  My sister and her family heard about him through petfinder.com and agreed to act as a foster family for him while a permanent home could be found.  My brother-in-law brought him to the U.S. at the end of a business trip to Taipei and they began to nurse him back to health.  He is a regal but sweet tempered dog and he responded quickly to the TLC shown him by his new foster family.  Of course, everyone in the  family fell in love with him, so he’s no longer a foster dog, but has been adopted, given a new  name, and is now a permanent part of of a loving family.

Yesterday morning, I shot a couple of locations to add to the library of images I show my clients when they are trying to decide on an outdoor venue for their photo shoots. As I was wrapping up the shoot in a local park, I heard a loud squawk behind me and turned to see a beautiful macaw tethered to a 75 foot string flying in circles around the park. This happens to me all the time – I go out intending to photograph one thing and end up finding something totally unexpected to shoot. Another reason to love photography.

The macaw’s owner graciously allowed me to shoot a series of images of her exotic pet. Here, the bird responds to her owner’s whispered request: “c’mon, let’s see an eagle, let’s see an eagle.”

I went out to the Phoenix Zoo for what I had hoped would be a quiet day wandering around shooting images of the animals. When I arrived, however, a fleet of school buses had just disgorged 100,000 screaming fourth graders, so my zen day was not to be.

Nonetheless, this flamingo found a way to grab a nap.