Sometimes as a professional photographer you have to change or adapt in order to pull off what you set out to do.

Such was the case this year at the 2021 National Finals Breakaway Roping  at the Orleans arena in Las Vegas, America. Initially we had planned to use lights for the whole shoot. I packed my Profoto lights for the portrait session and had planned to rent my friends lights who was already shooting a different event in same arena. Sometimes you get lucky, this arena was very well lit and had a hot spot in just the right spot (if you have to have a hot spot, pray it’s in the right place.) Given that breakaway roping is the fastest sport in rodeo, ( fastest time this week was a 1.7 second run ) and the fastest recycle time for lights is .70 seconds ( and those are very expensive ) that only gives you two chances to nail the shot. I knew this in advance, so I packed the fast glass and prayed for what Vegas is known for, bright lights and fast action. Packing large glass is always a pain and expensive when flying, as I mentioned in a earlier post, when we haled a cab from the sidewalk of the airport,  we must have looked like Eddie Murphy in Coming to America!

Anyway… the 400 f2.8 and the D6 got the nod and I never pulled out the 200 f2 or 120-300. Went to my max iso for my shooting which is 3200 iso, got a 640 shutter at F2.8 which gives a little blur to the rope but contestants are tack sharp.

Now the old saying “when you get, you give up, “ that’s never been more true than in photography. Sure, I was getting 10 frames plus per second but gave up some image quality as nothing compares to a well lit shot of the strobes. However, the ability to make sure to capture the peak action moment without worrying that the lights wouldn’t have time to recycle, was a bet I wasn’t willing to make. This arena was lighted so well that I would have had to use a smaller aperture and more light to avoid the ghosting effect that a 250th sync speed can sometimes yield. So all in all it was a good trade off and balancing of the photo scales to achieve my shooting goal!

The shoots were not long but had a major, non-stop intensity of about two and a half hours a day and the preparation for that intensity, along with post processing and uploading images to three locations made for 16 hour days. That being said, I would not change a thing, what a rush! Luckily, Lisa, who served as my assistant, did all heavy lifting as far as setting up computers, naming images, setting up studio and taking care of phone calls or anything else that might distract from my shooting and editing.

Official NFBR National Finals Breakaway Roping Championship Photographer ~ Joe Duty

breakaway, NFBR, photography, photography workshops, rodeo, roping, Sawyer Gilbert, w productions