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Sheepherders & Buckaroos

Deon

Member
My wife and I moved to a small remote community high in the mountains of the Great Basin Desert to create art. We lived in Eureka, Nevada (population 300-600 depending on the price of gold) for 13 years. Trish and I operated an art gallery on Main Street (US-50 the Loneliest Road in America) for 9 of those years. We lived in the back of an 1880 bank building, operating our gallery out front (US-50 frontage). The local folks started out friendly enough, but it took over three years before the anyone felt comfortable to invite us out on their ranch to make photographs. Then out of the blue a local (matriarch) rancher invited us out to photograph their traditional way of branding, buckaroo style. Everyone wore traditional garb, no motorized anything, brands red hot in a fire, no propane and kids eating Rock Mountain Oysters right off the fire. This was super fun visual excitement! Then word got out we are not from PETA and we wanted to document/photograph traditional Buckaroo/Basque ways before they are gone. Local ranchers started to ask if we wanted to attend brandings, then a 300 mile cattle drive across Northern Nevada and lastly the Basque community invited us out to document a traditional sheep sheering, although most of the hands where Peruvian.

I'm really more of a landscape photographer, usually shying away from pointing my camera at people. But, when they ask you really nice and want you to climb right into the pen and get dirty with everyone, it becomes super fun. As you can see I'm really not very good with people, I'll stick to inanimate objects, people and animals move to quick for my eye to design very well...

All images Hasselblad 501C/M w/60mm f=3.5 CF Distagon lens and Ilford FP-4 film. I do all my own lab work all the way to digitization. Here is a super small sample.
independance.jpg


martin.jpg


sixmile.jpg
 
I like your images and would love the opportunity to shoot a branding, or rodeo. The 60mm looks to be a great lens, but I surround it with the 50mm and the 80mm, but having bought the 100mm recently I think they would match each other better and the 50/80 could go.

Just had a trip up Main Street, Eureka on Google Earth but I couldn't see your gallery. What number were you, or next to what building. You did well to survive 15 years in a gallery there as I can't imagine there was much passing traffic stopping by. Left me wondering how dependent on the internet you were for custom.
Thanks for posting.
 
I like your images and would love the opportunity to shoot a branding, or rodeo. The 60mm looks to be a great lens, but I surround it with the 50mm and the 80mm, but having bought the 100mm recently I think they would match each other better and the 50/80 could go.

Just had a trip up Main Street, Eureka on Google Earth but I couldn't see your gallery. What number were you, or next to what building. You did well to survive 15 years in a gallery there as I can't imagine there was much passing traffic stopping by. Left me wondering how dependent on the internet you were for custom.
Thanks for posting.
Thank you for your kind words. At some point I’ve owned almost every C or CF lens Hasselblad ever made. You will find that the 100mm lens is nothing short of amazing. There is a reason NASA sent the 60mm and 100mm into space, they have extremely high resolution for all those classified films they used.

We live in New Mexico now, the last time we drove through Eureka (last fall) our old building had sold yet again and is now a flop house for miners (yuck!). The number is 41 N Main. There is an empty lot to the south of our old building. When we lived there Nevada tourism did a great job of keeping tourists driving across US 50 all summer long (the Loneliest Road in America). That ended a couple years prior to our departure when tourism changed direction. We could actually get by with the sales from the gallery, but mostly I sell my photography worldwide through gallery shows and word of mouth. I’m in the process of organizing all the work I have created over the last four decades, then planning out a new website with a shopping cart to sell my art online as well. Fingers crossed!
 
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