“Speak your mind, but ride a fast horse.”
~ Texas Bix Bender

Southern Alberta is more 'Texas" than Texas.
I remember the first time I was photographing a rodeo, a small one, Dog Pound Rodeo, a little north of Calgary.
When the announcer mentioned the next rider saying, "Here is Mike McCullough, grade 11 High School, calf roping champion for (insert small Alberta town here), I smiled and knew i was in the right place.
This was real life.

In June 2014 some friends invited me to photograph a branding near Nanton, Alberta. A branding for those who don't know, is where they mark the cattle with hot branding iron to mark the cattle.  Prevents people from rustling (stealing) their cows.

I drove to Nanton, my friend picked me up - twenty minutes on a paved road, the same on a dirt road. From the ranch house in the foothills of the Rocky Moutains, it took us about another 30-45 minutes on a mud track in the pick-up truck to arrive where they were doing the branding.
It was like stepping back in time.
Almost everything was being done as it has been for a couple of hundred years.
And everyone was so calm.  The weather was perfect. Overcast.
I was able to get wonderful saturated colours.

There were cowboys from 13 years old to almost 80 years old.
All wrangling the calves away from their mamas.

These are some of the few hundred that I took that day.