Save a horse...ride a cowboy

...as the song goes. Finally thawed out from my 'cool store' experience and this week it was time to get hot and sweaty at the Whangarei Rodeo. If you've never been to one, you're missing out. They're dusty, gritty, sweaty, exciting and real! It's a cross section of New Zealanders that us townies don't often get to meet and a great opportunity for photography.

It's not until you get up close to bulls weighing nearly a ton that you appreciate how much guts these guys have, then there's leaping off horses at full gallop and wrestling steers to the ground! Not for the faint hearted and I do wish I could have some of what they had for breakfast. Having a zoom stuck through the fence, you sometimes forget that the large livestock/cowboy filling the frame and getting closer by the millisecond, isn't actually about to crush you... though the snigger of the people who have seen you leap backwards might!

Rather than a bull ride or bareback shot, I chose this photo because I love the way the steer and rider are like a mirror image of each other. I guess in this game, you gotta be at one with the animals. Check out some more of my rodeo images on my site.