Great Basin Buckaroo Photography

Buckaroos of the Great Basin: Cowboy Photography from Nevada

Black-and-white photograph of cattle crossing shallow water beneath a broad, flat-topped mountain on the Nevada range.

A cowboy moves cattle from a watering hole in open range on the Spanish Ranch

There are places in Nevada where the distances seem to change the scale of everything. Mountains rise out of open basins, ranches sit hundreds of miles apart, and a cowboy on horseback can disappear into the landscape.

The buckaroo tradition grew out of this country. The word traces back to the Spanish vaquero, and the horsemanship, equipment and methods still carry that influence. But this isn't a reenactment of the old West. The people in these photographs make their living here.

These images were made while photographing working ranches and buckaroos in Nevada as part of Calves to the Fire, my long-term project documenting contemporary cowboy and ranching culture throughout the American West.

Explore the complete Calves to the Fire project

View available fine art cowboy prints from this series. Reach out directly to inquire about prints of any photographs not already listed for sale

CONTACT ROB


Working Cowboys

Buckaroo on horseback swinging a lariat above cattle in a dusty branding pen, with smoke rising around the herd.

A buckaroo swings his rope from horseback as cattle move through the branding pen on a cold morning on the ZX Ranch

Much of ranch work happens without any consideration for what it looks like in a photograph. Cattle need to be gathered. Calves need to be branded and doctored. Horses need to be caught. Fences break. Weather changes.

That's also what makes photographing it interesting.

There isn't much opportunity to manufacture a moment. You watch what's happening, figure out where you need to be, and try not to get in anyone's way.

Two buckaroos on horseback working a herd of cattle, with a rope stretched between the riders and rugged mountains in the background.

Rope stretches between two mounted buckaroos as they work cattle across the range.

Smoke and dust are part of the visual language of a branding, but they're also simply part of the job. Cowboys rope calves from horseback and bring them toward the crew, where everything happens quickly before the calf is released.

The photographs I'm interested in aren't really about the spectacle of cowboy culture. They're about the work itself. The repetition, skill and physical knowledge that become almost invisible when you've done something thousands of times.

A rope in the air lasts a fraction of a second. The more interesting part is everything that had to happen before it got there.

Close-up of a buckaroo's saddle featuring a textured leather horn cover, engraved silver concho, coiled rope, and worn leather tack.

Rattlesnake skin and an engraved silver concho on a buckaroos saddle in northern Nevada.

Buckaroo on horseback and another cowboy working beside a calf during a branding, with cattle spread across the range behind them.

Buckaroos branding cattle on a northern Nevada cattle ranch

Cowboy roping and restraining a calf during branding work on a dusty ranch, with other cowboys and horses nearby.

A cowboy restrains a calf on the ground while horses and other ranch hands work nearby.

Two buckaroos on horseback roping cattle in a dusty ranch pen, with a mountain range in the background.

Cattle move through the dusty pen as buckaroos work from horseback on the Winecup Gamble Ranch

In a vast desert landscape a buckaroo works cattle in a corral on the TS Ranch

Black-and-white close-up of a horse wearing an ornate engraved silver bit and bridle with decorative metalwork and linked chains.

An engraved silver bit and linked chains detail the horse's bridle against the open range.

The People Behind the Work

Close-up portrait of a cowboy wearing a black hat, white neckerchief, and curled white mustache against a dark background.

Curled white mustache and wild rag frame the cowboy's face beneath his hat.

Close-up of a buckaroo's hands resting on denim jeans beside a coiled rope, worn leather saddle, and patterned saddle blanket.

Rope, worn leather, and denim come together in a close view of a buckaroo's saddle and gear.

The West is easy to reduce to symbols: a hat, a horse, a pair of boots, a rope.

Spend enough time around working ranches and you’ll realize that those things are equipment. In the Great Basin though, buckaroos have a style all their own. A style they are proud to wear because it separates them from cowboys in every other region of the West.

Portrait of a buckaroo wearing a weathered cowboy hat decorated with white feathers and a denim jacket against a dark background.

White feathers tucked into a weathered flat brim hat stand out against the buckaroo's denim jacket.

I've been photographing cowboys for years, and the portraits I like most tend to happen somewhere between everything else. They aren't meant to turn the subject into a character. They're simply a record of someone who was there.

Hands, leather, rope and tack show the same wear as the people using them.

Cowboy kneeling beside a calf during branding on a Nevada ranch, with smoke drifting across the open ground.

Smoke drifts across the branding ground as a cowboy works beside a calf held on its side.

The equipment varies from ranch to ranch and cowboy to cowboy. Saddles, bits, reins and handmade silver aren't decoration added for a photograph. Many are working objects that have been used for years, but also represent the Buckaroo culture.

Buckaroo couple seated on a stone wall with a black-and-white herding dog, wearing cowboy hats, plaid shirts, and jeans.

Seated on a stone wall, the couple poses with their herding dog beside the weathered rock structure.

Ranch life is also bigger than the moments most commonly associated with cowboy photography. Families, dogs, meals, horses, equipment and long stretches of ordinary life all exist around the work.

That quieter material has become increasingly important to the larger project.

Life in Cow Camp

Primitive stoves are set up under a chuckwagon tent with cowboy teepees in the background at sunrise on a working cattle ranch

Sunrise at cow camp on a working cattle ranch in the American West

Days don't necessarily begin or end according to a clock. They begin when the work requires it and end when the work is finished.

Cow camp has its own rhythm. Meals, coffee, saddling horses and whatever brief amount of sleep can be fit between one day's work and the next.

There isn't much romance involved while you're living it.

Looking back at the photographs is another matter.

Black-and-white photograph of a cowboy in a hat and work shirt standing beside a steaming mug and cooking pot in a ranch kitchen.

The chuckwagon cook on a buckaroo outfit in Nevada

Two buckaroos gathering horses at night beneath a dark, star-filled sky, with one rider swinging a rope overhead.

Under a star-filled sky, two buckaroos catch horses from the herd in the early morning.

Cowboys on horseback moving cattle across the Nevada range at sunset, silhouetted against a red and purple sky.

Cowboys move cattle across the range as the rising sun lights the clouds above the mountains.

At night, the landscape disappears and the horses become shapes beneath the stars.

Then morning comes and it starts again.

Black-and-white photograph of a buckaroo closing a metal ranch gate across a snow-dusted pasture beneath a cloudy sky.

A buckaroo closes the metal gate as snow patches cover the open pasture.on the ZX Ranch

The Great Basin

Two buckaroos on horseback riding through sagebrush across the open Great Basin landscape.

Two buckaroos make their way through sagebrush across the open range.

You can't separate buckaroo culture from the landscape that produced it.

Nevada's Great Basin is enormous, dry and sparsely populated. Ranching here means working across distances that are difficult to understand from a map.

Black-and-white photograph of a lone buckaroo on horseback crossing an open plain beneath a rugged mountain.

A lone rider crosses the open plain below a rugged mountain range on the C-Punch Ranch.

That scale is something I've become increasingly interested in photographing.

The cowboy doesn't always need to dominate the frame.

Sometimes the photograph works precisely because he doesn't.

Ranch structures can look temporary against this landscape, even when they've been standing for generations.

A rider becomes a small mark against miles of country.

And sometimes almost disappears completely.

Black-and-white photograph of weathered cattle-handling equipment and fenced corrals on an open ranch beneath a cloudy sky.

A beaver slide hay stacker stands inside a fenced pasture beneath a cloud-filled sky.

Black-and-white photograph of a lone buckaroo on horseback crossing an open hillside framed by large foreground rocks.

Framed by rocky outcrops, a lone rider crosses the massive open hillside on the C-Punch Ranch.

A Working West

One of the things that originally drew me to photographing cowboys was the gap between the popular image of the American West and the reality of people who still work in it.

The mythology isn't completely wrong. It's just incomplete.

The hats are real. The horses are real. So are the ropes, cattle drives and brandings. But so are busted equipment, bad weather, exhaustion, early mornings and endless miles of fence.

The West didn't disappear.

It just kept working.

Buckaroo on horseback guiding a herd of cattle through a ranch pasture, with sagebrush in the foreground and mountains in the distance.

Cattle move through the pasture as a buckaroo follows on horseback, with mountains rising beyond the ranch.

These photographs are part of Calves to the Fire, an ongoing body of work I've made over years of traveling to working ranches throughout the American West. The larger project follows cowboys through brandings, cattle drives, everyday ranch work, portraits and the quieter moments that happen in between.

I don't think of the project as an attempt to preserve a disappearing West.

I'm more interested in documenting the one that's still here.

Line of buckaroos on horseback in front of a ranch corral, with cattle and dry mountains in the background.

A line of buckaroos sits mounted along the corral with cattle gathered nearby.

Branding calves in rough country on the ZX Ranch-Oregon

Explore Calves to the Fire

Calves to the Fire is an ongoing documentary photography project about working cowboys, ranching culture and the landscape of the American West.

The larger archive includes photographs made across Nevada, Texas, Montana, Nebraska, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming and other parts of the West.

VIEW THE COMPLETE COWBOY PHOTOGRAPHY PROJECT

View more from the ranches featured in this blog:

Spanish Ranch

C-Punch Ranch

TS Ranch

ZX Ranch

Cowboy Fine Art Prints

Selected photographs from Calves to the Fire are available as signed, limited-edition fine art prints.

The collection includes photographs from working ranches throughout the American West, with multiple sizes available for private collections, residential interiors, hospitality and commercial spaces. Additional photographs from the archive can also be considered for specific projects.

VIEW COWBOY FINE ART PRINTS

Interior designers & art consultants: inquire about trade pricing, custom framing and archive selections.

Photograph of a buckaroo catching horses

Western Photography Licensing

The Calves to the Fire archive includes years of documentary photography from working cattle ranches throughout the American West.

Images are available for select editorial, publishing, advertising, hospitality and commercial licensing, including photographs of working cowboys, ranchers, horses, cattle, brandings, roping, ranch landscapes, Western equipment and contemporary ranch life.

If you're searching for a specific subject, region or type of image, much of the archive has never appeared on the website.

CONNTACT ROB

Cowboy moving cattle on the Winecup Gamble Ranch

A cowboy working on the C-Punch Ranch in Lovelock, Nevada

C-Punch Ranch

Cowboys working colts in a round pen on the C-Punch Ranch in Lovelock, Nevada

C-Punch Ranch - Cowboys working horses in a round pen

Trapper Rogers - Winecup Gamble Ranch - Montello, Nevada

Portrait of Trapper Rodgers

Inside One of America’s Oldest Leather Tanneries

Inside Wickett & Craig: Photographs of an American Leather Tannery

Leather is part of our everyday lives, but most people never give any thought to what it is or where it comes from. After more than 6 years photographing working cowboys and ranches throughout the American West, I'm accustomed to seeing it everywhere: saddles, reins, bridles, chaps, boots, belts, and countless other pieces of gear. Usually, by the time I photograph it, the leather has already spent years being worked hard.

The Wickett & Craig tannery in Curwensville, Pennsylvania, offered an opportunity to see the other end of that story.

Founded in 1867, Wickett & Craig has been making leather for more than 150 years and is one of the few remaining specialty vegetable tanneries in the United States. The company spent its first 123 years in Toronto before moving to Pennsylvania around 1990, where it now operates a large tannery producing millions of square feet of leather each year.

I went there to photograph the people, machinery, and process behind it.

Workers handle leather hides beside machinery inside the Wickett & Craig tannery in Pennsylvania

Hides move through one of the working areas inside Wickett & Craig.

Inside an American Leather Tannery

There isn't much about the inside of Wickett & Craig that feels designed for visitors. It's a working industrial building, and nearly every surface shows evidence of what happens there. Pipes run overhead, hides hang throughout the facility, enormous drums occupy entire sections of the building, and years of water, oils, dyes, tannins, and production have left their marks on the floors, walls, and machinery.

That's exactly what made the place interesting to photograph.

I've always been attracted to working environments where nothing has been cleaned up or arranged for the camera. There is already enough visual information in a place like this. The challenge isn't creating something interesting, but figuring out how to organize what is already happening into a photograph.

Wickett & Craig operates on more than 16 acres and produces roughly 4.5 million square feet of leather annually. Walking through the tannery, the scale of that production is immediately apparent. Hides are stacked, hanging, stretched, soaked, rolled, and fed through machinery as they move from one part of the building to another.

The finished leather most people recognize is still a long way off.

Leather hides hang above tanning vats inside the industrial tannery

Hides hang over the tanning vats as they move through the vegetable tanning process.

A Wickett & Craig worker handles a large wet leather hide beside a metal processing machine inside the Pennsylvania tannery.

Leather is handled by hand in the tannery's wet processing areas.

Making Vegetable-Tanned Leather

Wickett & Craig specializes in vegetable-tanned leather, a traditional method that uses naturally derived tannins to transform raw cattle hides into leather. Compared with modern chrome tanning, vegetable tanning is a considerably slower process. At Wickett & Craig, the complete transformation takes roughly six weeks.

The hides come from North American cattle and first have to be prepared, rehydrated, dehaired, fleshed, and split before tanning begins. From there they move into a tanning yard containing 72 vats filled with a proprietary tanning liquor that includes natural extracts from mimosa and quebracho. The hides spend approximately two weeks in the tanning solution.

After tanning, the leather moves through a series of processes that determine its eventual thickness, color, feel, and finish. Large rotating drums are used for dyeing and conditioning. Oils and waxes are worked into the leather, while products such as Wickett & Craig's English Bridle and Harness leathers receive additional treatment with waxes and tallows.

Eventually the hides are stretched across large perforated screens and moved into a climate-controlled drying area. After several days of drying, they continue through finishing and grading before leaving the tannery.

Understanding the basic process helps explain the photographs, but what interested me most wasn't the individual sequence of steps. It was seeing how much physical work still exists inside an operation producing leather at this scale.

A Wickett & Craig worker stands beside a large brown leather hide inside the Pennsylvania tannery

A brief pause in the work, surrounded by leather and processing machinery.

The People Behind the Process

Machines do a lot of the heavy work at Wickett & Craig, but the tannery doesn't feel automated.

Workers are constantly handling the material, moving hides, operating equipment, checking leather, guiding it through machines, and preparing it for whatever happens next. Even with the size of the facility and machinery, there is a very human rhythm to the place.

That's something I've always been drawn to photograph.

People who have done the same kind of work for years develop an efficiency that is difficult to fake. Movements become automatic. They know how a piece of material should behave and recognize when something isn't right. That kind of physical knowledge is visible even when you don't fully understand the job yourself.

Photographing people who are actually working also changes my role as a photographer. There is very little reason for me to direct anything. I can watch, learn the rhythm of what is happening, and try to anticipate where the next photograph might be.

The goal isn't to make the tannery look cleaner, prettier, or more dramatic than it is. The worn machinery, wet floors, stained walls, work clothes, hanging hides, and odd industrial light are all part of the place. Removing those things would remove much of what makes it worth photographing.

Two workers handle a suspended hide beside industrial machinery at Wickett & Craig

Handling a hide this size takes two people.

A worker handles leather hides on a conveyor inside the Wickett & Craig tannery in Pennsylvania

Conveyors, hanging hides, and machinery fill this section of the production floor.

A Tannery With More Than 150 Years of History

Wickett & Craig began making leather in Toronto in 1867 and remained there for more than a century. When the company relocated around 1990, it moved to Curwensville, a small Pennsylvania town in a region with its own long history of tanning and leather production.

Today, the company occupies a facility covering more than 16 acres. Although the machinery and production requirements have evolved over the years, Wickett & Craig continues to specialize in vegetable tanning at a time when much of the world's leather is produced using faster methods.

There is something compelling about seeing an old process continuing at a meaningful industrial scale. This isn't a demonstration of how leather used to be made or a historic workshop preserved for visitors. People are coming to work every day and producing leather that will be shipped to manufacturers and craftspeople around the world.

The history is interesting, but the fact that the work is still happening is what matters.

Photographing People at Work

The photographs from Wickett & Craig also fit into a much broader subject I've returned to throughout my career: people at work.

I've photographed inside barbershops across all 50 states, on cattle ranches throughout the American West, and in workshops, factories, and other places where people make things or work with their hands. The occupations are different, but many of the things that attract me to them are the same.

Working environments develop their own visual language. Tools end up in particular places because that's where they're needed. Buildings change around the work being done inside them. Clothing gets stained and machinery gets worn in predictable places. The environment gradually becomes a record of the work itself.

The people change too. Someone who has performed a task thousands of times moves differently from someone doing it for the first time. Those small gestures and routines often make better photographs than anything I could have staged.

That's why I'm generally most comfortable photographing people while they're actually doing something. Once the work starts, my presence becomes less important. The person I'm photographing has something else to concentrate on, which allows the photographs to become less about the camera and more about what is actually happening.

Interior of the Wickett & Craig tannery with leather, work tables, barrels, and industrial equipment on the production floor

Pipes, barrels, work tables, and leather give the production floor its distinctly industrial character.

A folded leather hide is carried past metal machinery and stacked materials on the tannery floor

Moving hides from one part of the tannery to another is part of the daily work.

From the Tannery to the Cowboy

My interest in Wickett & Craig also connects naturally to my ongoing Cowboy Photography project.

Leather is one of the fundamental materials of cowboy culture, although it's easy to overlook because it is so commonplace. A working cowboy may spend much of the day surrounded by it without ever thinking of leather as a material in the abstract. It has already become a saddle, reins, a bridle, boots, chaps, or a belt. It's equipment.

The leather I've photographed on ranches also tends to be at the opposite end of its life from what I saw at Wickett & Craig. Saddles have been shaped by years on horseback, reins darkened by hands, sweat, and weather, and boots scratched and covered in dust. Good leather records its use, which is part of what makes old cowboy gear so visually interesting.

At Wickett & Craig, I was seeing the material before any of that happened. Before a saddlemaker or leatherworker turned it into something useful, and long before years of work gave it the character I'm accustomed to photographing.

Some of the heavier leather produced at Wickett & Craig ultimately becomes saddles, bridles, straps, and other equestrian equipment. That creates a direct line between a tannery in a small Pennsylvania town and the ranches I've photographed thousands of miles away in the West.

A broad brown leather hide feeds through a large metal processing machine as it is guided by hand

Near the end of the process, leather passes through one of the tannery's finishing machines.

A worker lies on a work table surrounded by leather hides and processing equipment inside the Wickett & Craig tannery

A brief pause after a long day of work, surrounded by leather and equipment.

A portrait surrounded by carts loaded with leather on the tannery's production floor

A portrait between the carts of leather and large drums on the tannery floor.

The Work Before the Work

One of the things I like about photographing manufacturing is that it exposes parts of everyday objects that are normally invisible.

When you look at a well-made saddle, it's natural to think about the saddlemaker. You see the stitching, tooling, construction, and design and understand that someone had to know how to make it. What is much easier to forget is that the craftsman began with a material somebody else had already spent weeks making.

The same is true of boots, belts, bridles, and countless other leather goods.

By the time those objects reach the people who use them, the tannery has disappeared from the story. There is no obvious evidence of the vats, drums, drying racks, machinery, or workers in Pennsylvania who handled the leather long before it became a finished object.

That's part of what made Wickett & Craig worth photographing.

My Cowboy project is largely about documenting a working culture that still exists despite the tendency to talk about the American West in the past tense. The same idea applies here. Wickett & Craig isn't interesting simply because the company was founded in 1867 or because vegetable tanning is an old process.

It's interesting because people are still doing the work.

A hide comes into the tannery. Over the next several weeks, people and machines transform it into leather. That leather leaves Pennsylvania and becomes something else in somebody else's hands. Eventually, some of it will wind up on a horse or a ranch, where another kind of work begins.

The tannery and the cowboy might seem like two completely different subjects.

For me, they're connected by the same thing: the work.

Worn tools stand in two barrels inside the Wickett & Craig tannery

Years of use show up in the tools and equipment around the tannery.

A worker handles a leather hide beside industrial processing machinery at Wickett & Craig

The work continues around the large processing machines inside the tannery.

Stacks of brown leather hides fill a production area alongside machinery, carts, and work surfaces

Stacks of leather wait alongside the machinery and work areas throughout the facility.

At Work

There are a lot of strategies for being productive while on the road. One of them is the “pop-in”. It’s become my go-to when rain won’t let you do much outside. That’s precisely how these images came to be. The pop-in isn’t for everybody. It used to scare the hell out of me. Then you realize there are only two answers, yes or no. If it’s a no, who cares? Just move on. Tony, the owner of this garage, was happy to let me hang out for a few minutes to make some images. Confused as to why, but it didn’t bother him any. Obviously they are going into my “At Work” series that has been so much fun to shoot. Some of the images you’ll see in the gallery are personal and others were made for clients. Better yet, some of them are personal assignments that were later published. Love when that happens.

Cowboy Portraits

Authentic Cowboy Portraits

Brought the lighting gear out to a cattle branding a few months ago to make some portraits of all the cowboys and cowgirls working on the ranch. Wanted the focus to just be the people and their gear without anything else to distract from that. Had a blast setting it all up and shooting in a horse trailer, but still undecided if I’ll stick with this style or not.

Click HERE to see more from this series.

Cowboy Culture Photography

Cattle Branding - Cowboy Photography

There’s nothing staged about the kind of cowboy photographs I make. No hired models in brand-new hats. No one pretending to ride for the brand. Just real people doing real work day in and day out, in weather that doesn’t care if you’ve got a camera slung over your shoulder.

For the past 5 years I’ve been photographing working cowboys on ranches across the American West. Not for the sake of nostalgia or myth-making, but because this way of life still exists, and it’s worth documenting. It’s early mornings, long days, sore horses, busted hands, and wind that doesn’t quit. It’s also pride, precision, and an unspoken connection between the people, the animals, and the land.

Most of the time, I’m just trying to stay out of the way. The goal isn’t to direct or interrupt—it’s to be quiet, to watch, and to make images that feel true. The kind that a cowboy can look at and say, “Yeah, that’s how it really is.”

These photographs aren’t just about cowboy hats and boots (though those are in there too). They’re about culture. About people whose lives are shaped by purpose, place, and tradition. And if you spend enough time around it, you realize it’s not just a job. It’s a commitment. A way of seeing the world.

If you're interested in cowboy culture—not the romanticized version, but the actual, hard-earned life behind it, this collection of photographs is for you. No frills, no filters. Just the truth of the West, one frame at a time.

Click HERE to see more of my cowboy photography.

Click HERE to shop my collection of cowboy photography prints

The Gunsmith

Always blows my mind to think about the simple act of talking and where it can lead. A while back I stopped in Laramie, Wyoming to say hi to a barber I’ve known there for a few years. Afterward while walking Mojo around town I came upon a gunsmith shop (not this one) a few blocks off the main street. A gunsmith at work is something I’ve been wanting to photograph, so we popped in and introduced ourselves. That interaction didn’t result in the desired outcome but it was still informational/entertaining. The owner didn’t want to be photographed for a variety of reasons. Some of them valid. The rest were…….irrational??!! The somewhat brief conversation consisted of his opinion on the world today and how “you can’t even go to Denver anymore because everybody is getting shot.” He asked if I had a gun and was upset to hear that I only kept it in my truck. “That’s not good enough. You have to keep it on you! That’s when they get you, when you’re getting out of your truck !”. I’m not disagreeing that the world is a sort of a disaster, but it also seemed like his thoughts were that of a person who might not ever leave their small town. Maybe I’m wrong?! And no disrespect to small towns. They are my favorite. Afterward I asked if there are any other gunsmiths in the area. He replied with very vague information about a guy that possibly works out of his house on a dead end street down near the highway. So I went looking and somehow found the place only recognizable by small stenciled letters “Gun Shop Parking” on the chimney bricks near the front gate. Otherwise the house was totally nondescript and didn’t show any other signs of life. A knock on the door confirmed nobody was home. Not a big deal. It was on my radar for the next trip through Wyoming.

Click HERE to see more from my “At Work” series.

Meat Processing Photographs

Meat Processing Plant Photography in Wyoming | Real Food Production Environments

One thing you can always depend on during a road trip is that weather will at some point throw a wrench in your plans. It’s unavoidable. You can either sulk about it or seek out an alternative. Admittedly, I used to get bent about bad weather! It has to be sunny to make any kind of pictures that are worth a damn, I thought! False. When you’re in the mountains it’s always smart to consider snow, but it’s not often that you figure on an October storm big enough to shut down travel! Well, it happened last month when I was scheduled to shoot with a rancher in southern Wyoming on my way from Montana to Colorado. It was a hairy drive from Bozeman down through northern Wyoming and got worse as the night went on. Being October the summer tires were still on my truck which didn’t help matters any. Made it as far as Casper and hit the proverbial wall. Couldn’t keep my eyes open any more so I got a hotel with the plan to wake up at the ass crack in order to arrive at the ranch on time. Only the snow didn’t stop and every which way to Laramie was closed down. Not a single highway or back road to be had. Frustrated but determined not to let it ruin the day I began driving local roads in search of something to photograph. Early on I came upon a local taxidermist shoveling the sidewalk in front of his shop. We chatted for a bit, unfortunately he didn’t have anything going that warranted shooting. No pun intended. When asked for a recommendation he quickly pointed me towards Dan’s Meat Processing about a mile down the road. So I headed directly over there and was warmly greeted by the owner who was more than willing to let me hang out and photograph their operation.

It would have been easy to sit in the hotel waiting out the storm and catch up on some much needed rest, but why? These trips and time on the road are so valuable to me that I don’t ever want to waste an opportunity. Even if that means creating one from nothing. And the images you see here are exactly the kind of thing I would have wanted to shoot anyway! Showing the viewer a glimpse into a world they might not otherwise be familiar with or ever have access to. Being a part of cultures like these never gets old and makes me appreciate the fact that you don’t have to travel to some exotic country in order to experience something different. You just have to look a little harder. I’ve personally never been on an elk hunt. Would like to change that, but my knowledge of them from talking to people in different parts of the country is that you need to dedicate a lot of time to the hunt. Something in the neighborhood of a week seems to be standard in most places. On this morning a guy backed his truck up to the loading door with a massive elk in the bed. I asked him how long he was out before shooting it. “Oooohhh, about 30 minutes”, he said.

Part of a Larger Body of Work Photographing People at Work

This series is part of a long-term project documenting people at work across America—inside environments most people never see. From meat processing facilities in Wyoming to ranches, machine shops, and industrial job sites, the focus is always the same: real people, real conditions, and the tools they rely on every day.

For brands producing workwear, safety equipment, or industrial products, this kind of environment isn’t staged—it’s where your gear is actually used.

View the full Workwear & Industrial Photography Portfolio

Get in touch to discuss a shoot in a real working environment