My motivation behind photography has always been to capture rare, fleeting moments. However, historically I have focused my photography on capturing moments of immovable objects: mountains, lakes, rivers, etc. Because with enough planning - checking the weather and cloud patterns, scouting the location beforehand, and shooting during golden hours - you can account for a lot of uncontrollable factors and increase the chance of a good photo. With people (outside of a controlled photoshoot), you do not have that luxury. You do not know when or where an opportunity for a great photo will come. But for that reason, with people, when you do capture a great moment, it is even more special.

This outing was one of the first times I even tried to photograph people, and it was totally unplanned. We were wandering aimlessly around the town of Enterprise, OR during sunset, which was rare because I usually meticulously plan sunrise and sunset if nothing else. We came across a billboard advertising a rodeo that just happened to be going on right then. It piqued our interest. We had watched 10+ seasons of Heartland (a Canadian ranching TV show) during COVID, but we have never been to a rodeo before in person. We bought two tickets on impulse and took our seats in the stands just as the opening ceremony was starting. I had my 70-200mm zoom lens on the whole event, finger spamming the trigger trying to capture any moment that looked like it would make for an interesting shot.

These two photos were and still are among my favorite in my 10+ years of photography. They capture a scene that is more personal and relatable than an imposing mountain, and one that may literally never be seen again given the much higher degrees of variability than a static landscape.

These two photos also served as a turning point in my photography towards embracing serendipity and uncontrollability (to the extent a obsessive planner can). Because when you do get a great shot, they just make it that much more special. All you need is a lot more luck - and a little more SD card memory.