Texas Photography Workshops – Rodeo & Western Lifestyle 2026

This year’s Rodeo & Western Lifestyle Workshop at Nine Bar Ranch hit a little different for me.

Usually, when I walk into one of these five-day classes, I’m running on adrenaline, coffee, instinct, and about thirty years of muscle memory behind a camera. But this year, life had other plans. Two days before the workshop started, I had a heart stent put in.

To be honest, I probably shouldn’t have been standing in a dusty arena teaching photography a couple days later. The first two days were rough. Real rough. I was sore to the core, dragging myself into the classroom each morning and honestly collapsing into bed each night. There were moments I leaned heavily on Lisa to carry the instruction side while I just tried to keep moving forward one hour at a time.

And yet… something strange happened.

By the third day, I realized I wasn’t thinking about myself anymore.

I was watching students chase light across the arena dirt. Watching them finally “see” moments instead of simply taking pictures. Watching confidence show up in their eyes after capturing a shot they didn’t think they could make. I found myself pushing through the soreness because these folks had traveled from all over the country to experience the cowboy way of life through a camera, and I felt responsible for helping them get there.

Somewhere between branding smoke, arena dust, horses blowing steam in the cool mornings, and sunsets settling over Nine Bar Ranch… I started healing.

Not just physically.

Mentally too.

There’s an old saying that it is better to give than receive. This year, I think we all got both.

The students came for photographs, but what we really shared was experience. Long days. Hard light. Honest moments. Real cowboy life unfolding right in front of us. The kind of stuff you cannot fake and cannot stage. The kind of life that reminds you what resilience looks like.

And maybe that’s the magic of photography when it’s done from the heart.

The camera forces you outside yourself. It asks you to look outward instead of inward. To search for beauty, emotion, struggle, grit, light, movement, and truth. It becomes less about settings and equipment and more about connection.

This year, with a camera in my hand and the cowboy way of life stretched out in front of me, I truly believe that process helped heal me.

I’ve spent a lifetime photographing cowboys because I admire something in them — the grit, the quiet toughness, the willingness to get up hurting and still saddle the horse because the work has to be done. Funny enough, this year I found myself leaning on that very mindset just to make it through the workshop.

And I’m thankful for it.

Thankful for Lisa stepping in beside me when I needed her most. Thankful for students who brought incredible energy and understanding. Thankful for the ranch, the livestock, the dust, the laughter, the stories, and the reminder that purpose itself can sometimes be medicine.

By the end of the week, I was tired… but it was a different kind of tired. The kind that comes from living fully instead of sitting still.

Sometimes healing doesn’t happen laying in a quiet room.

Sometimes it happens standing in the arena dirt at sunset with a camera in your hand and life unfolding right in front of you.

And for that lesson, I’m grateful.