ProRodeo Sports News - April 6, 2018

BEHIND THE CHUTE

PRCA ProRodeo file photo by Eva Scofield

and it shows all the obstacles that are up there, so you can’t just use a remote.

Why did you submit this photo for “Behind the Chute?” It just says, “Fort Worth.” I love the action photos, but this showed Fort Worth that I would do things that aren’t the traditional way. I will do traditional photos, but I also do extra things, and this is one of the first photos that people realized that my motto is true. For instance, Troy Lerwill, the barrelman, has jumped his motorcycle over me. Capturing images of indoor fireworks while keeping the scenery is tricky.What settings were you using to get this photo? I was using a Nikon D70s with the f-stop set at 22 and the exposure at 16.4 seconds, with a focal length of 10 millimeters and the aperture at 3. I love the 10.5-mm lens (a fisheye lens), I use it as something fun. How has your photography developed? I started out with a manual focus camera with film, a Norman 400B, and now I have 24 strobes and multiple lenses and backups to the backups. The equipment I had then is how much I have in just one case now. Back then, I had a photo lab in my Capri Camper. My first 1 GB card cost $1,000 (now they cost about $10). I didn’t know what to think when everything went digital. To shoot more than 36 photos at a time was strange because that used to be the most frames you could get because you had to change film. In the film days, it was one shot, one kill because it costs money every time you push that button. So you had to learn to shoot correctly or you would go broke. How many photos do you have in your archive? I switched to digital photos in 2004. Since, I’ve created about 18 or 19 terabytes of photos (about 12 million-38 million photos, depending on size). But then I would shoot some extra photos, like celebration photos, because I could. It took a while to break from the habit that it costs every time you push a button.

can see all the obstacles you have to shoot through, like the flags and wires, but now there are 100 times more stuff to shoot through. That was a pretty clean situation in 2007. I could never get that photo now because there’s so much stuff between where I shoot from and the arena below. Of all the photos you’ve taken, why do you like this photo most? It was the first one I did from the ceiling at a ProRodeo, and it’s one thing to shoot a rodeo from below, but this has the fireworks and the entire arena in it. It wasn’t just one piece, it was the entire arena. Before I started shooting at Fort Worth, the previous photographer, Dave Jennings, jokingly told the committee, “If you hire Phifer and you told him you needed to hang him from a rope on the ceiling, he would do it,” and then I basically did it. In your professional opinion, what makes this photo so interesting? I shoot rodeos all the time, and it’s a way to make you look at it differently. Some people think I have a camera with a remote, but it’s me up there shooting

ProRodeo Sports News 4/6/18

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