I love the Olympic games - both summer and winter - and cannot conceive of the practice and development of strength, endurance, and skill it takes to compete. The games also put my mind to work about games and how the origins of many of the sports came from sheer practicality and need, such as cross country skiing, biathlon, and downhill skiing.  Humans living in cold climates needed straightforward methods of transportation before fossil fuels were even imaginable, and the ability to procure food, probably with bows and arrows and later with guns.  The women and men competing now don't have the same life and death needs as the creators of these activities.  But they certainly have taken them to new heights.  Participants in the winter games that just concluded took every single event to new and stunning levels.

Another modern day event has its roots in real life, real time necessities.  The rodeo is a competition based on skills needed for riding and roping animals in order to get them and keep them on the range, in the corral, or to the train depots or stockyards.  From the photographs here, you can tell this was definitely "my first rodeo" - not as a participant but as a photographer - and I discovered that photographing a rodeo requires very special skills exclusive to the sport. The first two shots were of rodeo clowns preparing for their work. 

rodeo clowns perparing

rodeo clown stretching

Here is an action shot of the rodeo clowns at work, distracting the bull.

calf roping

I call this image of a cowboy waiting to compete "The Working End"

The Working End

Now the work is done, for the time being.

roper

A technical note.  These shots were made using a Mamiya 645 1 3/4 by 2 1/4 format camera, on lford 400 film, and scanned.

A tip of my hat to all, who, regardless of their work or sport, are constantly taking what they do to higher levels!

until next Monday,

DB

a passion for the image@