… And wish him better luck next time
And hope we see him up in Fargo
Or somewhere farther down the line
This time he sure drew a bad one
One that nobody could ride
But by the way he pulled his hat on
You knew he’d be there for the fight

And it’s the classic contradiction
The unavoidable affliction
Well it don’t take much to predict son
The way it always goes
One day she’ll say she loves you
And the next she’ll be tired of you
And push’ll always come to shove you
On that midnight rodeo.”

Farther Down The Line, Lyle Lovett

Hold on - Bareback bronc rider at Cooper, Texas rodeo.

Wrapped up the last night of the ATPI workshop tonight by joining several instructors and fellow participants for the first night of the 60th Annual Cooper Rodeo in Cooper, Texas (pop. 2150). We got there about 7:30 and had about 45 minutes to an hour of beautiful light. At 8:12 p.m., I snapped this one on my “loaner” Olympus E-510. I was using a beauty of a 50-200mm f2.8-3.5 zoom lens (equivalent 100-400mm on film). It isn’t the easiest lens to hand-hold but the E-510’s built-in image stabilizer has worked like a charm.

Technical details for anybody who cares are f3.5 and 1/640 on aperture priority at ISO 1600.

And by the way, this was a “good” ride for the full eight seconds, the first of the night.

Had a blast at this workshop. Will wrap it up tomorrow morning. Hopefully I’ll win one of these cameras I’ve been using this weekend. Cross your fingers. I’ll try to post more photos when I get home.