Sunwriter Loc: High Plains

More cowboys at work.

chcinc Loc: Northeast Pennsylvania

Nice scene, tells a story.
Cows and horses clipped, NG. They're falling off the corner of the image!

Sunwriter Loc: High Plains

Nah. They're just "movin' on"!

ebrunner Loc: New Jersey Shore

Great capture. Love the image and the way it plays to my imagination. Good job.

Heirloom Tomato Loc: Oregon

I have seen very few good shots of cowboys in action. This one looks great. The roper on the ridge is fantastic. The chopped cow doesn't bother me because there's plenty to look at here, so you can't begrudge a cow for running out of the frame. This looks like a blue-ribbon photo to me. Wish we could see it downloadable.

carlysue Loc: Columbus

I think "timeless". there is nothing here that can tie it to this century. well done.

Photog8 Loc: Morriston, FL

Would make a great mural. Well done. ;-)

Jay Pat Loc: Round Rock, Texas, USA

"Get along little doggies"!!!!
Thumbs up from me!
Pat

Carlysue! You changed!

gonate Loc: sacramento,calif

:) :) :) :) Great shot !!

vicksart Loc: Novato, CA -earthquake country

I really like the action and quality of the photo but wish the cows on the right and the bottom half of the horse hadn't been cut off.

Sunwriter Loc: High Plains

Thanks for the kind words, folks. Appreciated. I was really curious to hear the reactions to this one.

Now here's the rest of the story, made plain by the original neg, as below.

I wish my working environment was always as clean, predictable, and "arrangeable" as some seem to think it ought to be. It isn't. There are heavy, fast moving horses, angry cows, frightened calves. You need a third eye in the back of your head to stay safe. What this pic shows is what's called a "break-out." That's when a cow, or several, decide to break away from the main herd and head for the hills— and when that happens they won't they be stopped. When this one happened I was faced away, watching the main action. I heard fast hooves behind me and turned to see... this. No time to move away to clear the truck out of the frame, it was a case of take it or miss it. I took it. Elapsed time: maybe a second and a half.

It didn't meet my standards from the get-go. I sometimes have to fight against my "geometricity"— wanting to control every aspect of a frame; no leaks out of the edges; no weird confluences inside the box. This one was an anomaly, for obvious reasons. BUT— there was something about it. The energy, the drama, the three horsemen, the honesty of it. I couldn't let it go, so I tried to make something out of it. And you see what I managed.

BTW, cowboys love it.

vicksart Loc: Novato, CA -earthquake country

I knew there had to be more to this. We all do the best we can with what we have. What you got was excellent.

Chuck_893 Loc: Lincoln, Nebraska, USA

I bet the cowboys love it! I love it! And, there is a compositional principle (I think it has a name but I forget what) that allowing things to run out of frame implies that there are "more." I don't think I have an example to hand, but I've seen a simple shot of a group of people, say 10 or 11, walking across the frame on a street someplace. In the original picture all the people are fully visible in the shot, and it's immediately obvious that they are isolated, a small group of people all walking in one direction. If you crop just a little, so that the first person is cropped halfway through the body as s/he enters the frame, and the last person is also cropped halfway through the body as s/he exits the frame, the "mind's eye" starts to fill in more people—more people coming behind the first, and more people no longer visible out of frame. I wish I had the example, but I think you can get the drift. There is absolutely nothing wrong with cutoff cows exiting the frame because the easily-fooled mind starts to fill in a whole stampede. :shock:

Heirloom Tomato Loc: Oregon

Great comment. That is how the cutoff animals affected my view of the scene.

Chuck_893 Loc: Lincoln, Nebraska, USA

I got thinking about it some more, and found something I think illustrates it better than trying to describe it in words:

Silhouette of the iconic Abbey Road shot


If you did not know that there were only 4 people in the shot, this might imply an endless parade…