Scottsdale Parada del Sol Rodeo 8 March 2020

The Scottsdale Parada del Sol rodeo finals was held at Westworld on Sunday 8 March.  The all-around top cowboy was JC Mortensen for bareback riding and bull riding. Here are the full results from the rodeo finals. 


Events included bareback riding, steer wrestling, team roping, saddle bronc riding, tie-down roping, the ladies of barrel racing, and bull riding.  In addition to the rodeo clown, lady trick riders and ropers entertained and they were GOOD!   
   
In my opinion, the very easiest event for the fan to understand is barrel racing.   Three barrels to get around.   Knock any over and suffer a 5 second penalty.   And everything is electronically timed.  The lady and horse with  the fastest score wins.  

Westworld is an indoor arena with mixed artificial and natural light.   Although to the naked eye the arena looks well lit, it's a different challenge for a photographer.   Photos right out of the camera have a very decidedly orange tint.   The best white balance I found was fluorescent.  Because of the camera-weak lighting, I had to often use a very high ISO of 6400 or more.   Post processing in Lightroom, sometimes also in Luminar 4, and a few in Simplify 4. 


Next rodeo up for me is the Cave Creek Rodeo at the end of March.

Until My Next Adventure,

See you on down the road,

Jim Patterson

Here's a slideshow of all of my photos.... ENJOY!

Parada Del Sol Scottsdale Rodeo 11 March 2018

Sunday in the middle of March is time for the Parada Del Sol or Scottsdale Rodeo.  And once again, Westworld was host.  It’s an indoor arena with tricky lighting.  

I brought my second camera, the Canon G3x.  I got some wind from the rodeo people that they might stop me from bringing in my full size Canon 5D Mark IV.  Security could care less what I brought in.  What that ended up meaning was photos with higher grain.  Plus the G3x is a slower camera.  

Patriotism is a big part of rodeos.  That's good.  I love it.  

Bareback riding...

The ladies compete in barrel racing...

And the final event in every rodeo is eight seconds of hell, or bull riding.  

I also photographed steer wrestling, team roping, saddle bronc riding, and tie down roping.  Mark Swingler was the rodeo clown. And, we were also entertained by Whiplash The Cowboy Monkey.  

Given the limitations of an indoor arena for lighting and the limitations of the camera I used, I took more time in post processing, but I still got a decent number of photos.  

Until My Next Adventure,

(Cave Creek Rodeo!)

See You On Down the Road!

Jim Patterson

… and all the photos!

Parada Del Sol Rodeo Scottsdale 12 March 2017

This is one of my favorite rodeos, commonly called the Scottsdale Rodeo.  The venue is Westworld, an indoor arena, so at least no worries of a sunburn on this sunny Sunday in March.  Plus, it was air conditioned.

On the negative side, for photographers, was the mixed natural and fluorescent lighting.   And, that type of lighting always looks bright to the naked eye, but for the camera it isn't.  I had to compromise between shutter speed and the needed high ISO.  I was around 2500 ISO and a shutter speed from 1/160th to 1/200th of a second.  And the f/stop was as wide open as I could get.  So... I had to watch for grain in photos and maybe some unwanted motion blur.  I shot with a Canon 5D Mark IV and a Tamron 28-300mm lens.

We got to the arena quite early and was delighted to see a pre-event, ladies and gentlemen horseback target shooting.  The shooting made for a smokey arena, but this was fun to watch and it seemed to me the ladies did an overall better job of it!

What would a rodeo be without clowns?  I've always thought the clowns were some of the hardest working people in rodeo.  They are there to entertain but also distract angry animals away from cowboys.    

The ladies of rodeo put on what I consider to be my second favorite event:  barrel racing.  Now, this is a sad sight.  A barrel that goes down costs 5 seconds on the total time.  This young lady knocked down two this day so she was out of the running

This fellow rounds up buffalo and gets them on top of that trailer.  Magnificent creatures!

Probably not a good idea to play "horsey" with these big animals either!

Until My Next Adventure, 

See You On Down the Road!

Jim Patterson

Photos from Flickr ... and, here are all the keeper photos!

The Parada del Sol Rodeo 2 March 2014

I just flat out love photographing rodeos!  I’d have to say these are my people… the fans, the cowboys, the volunteers, the music … and the cowboys and I should say the cowgirls too are in a really rough sport.  It’s dangerous, hard work, and sometimes doesn’t pay that well.  The Parada del Sol in Scottsdale was a new venue for me.  I’d never been to WestWorld where the rodeo is held.  I got in general admission thinking it was an outdoor rodeo like the Tucson and Cave Creek events.  But WestWorld is an inside arena!  In addition, the lighting is fluorescent. 

Next year when I go, I’m going to spend extra money and sit in the VIP seats much closer to the action. 

OK, so I photographed with my Canon 5D Mark III and brought along a Canon 70-200mm “L” class lens, plus a Tamron 2x extender just in case.  I ended up using that to give me 300mm to 400mm reach. 

I set my camera white balance to fluorescent and took a few test photos to see how it looked.  I knew I was safe anyway because I shoot in raw format and I could change the white balance later on in Lightroom. 

I also decided to go Tv or shutter priority along with automatic ISO.  Yes, the Canon 5d Mark III can handle a really high ISO.  In this case, I’ve had some photos in my collection that were up to 12,800 ISO and look fine.  Imagine a few years ago trying that.  It wasn’t long ago that 1600 ISO was stretching it.  I set the Tv or shutter to 1/1000th of a second.  With a wide open aperture, you know I was really testing the cameras ability to take useable photos at incredibly high ISOs! 

But next year, I’m getting closer to the action.  I only got one useable lady barrel racer, darn it!  But I got some real keepers anyway.

A special shout-out to MacPhun software... In post processing, I used Lightroom along with SnapHeal Pro and Intensify Pro.  Give 'em a try!

See ya on down the road,

Jim Patterson

Part Two:  Fun with MacPhun!  Since I wrote this blog, I started playing with a few MacPhun editing tools and thought I'd share what I did.  

First, here is the photo I started with....   

Everything is in color and in focus.  Not bad.  

Next, from Lightroom I edited this in MacPhun's Focus 2 Pro.  I painted in the two areas I wanted in focus and the background was set out of focus.  I thought the volunteer to the left was interesting, so I painted him in focus along with the bucking horse and the cowboy. 
  

Finally, I took the above photo and edited it with MacPhun's ColorStrokes.  It converts the above photo to greyscale, then I am able to paint back in the original color.  If you make a mistake it is easy to correct, by the way.  

So now I ended up with a photo with selective bokeh (fuzzy focus) and areas I wanted highlighted with color.  Pretty neat, huh?

You can view all of my photos of the rodeo on Flickr…

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