Lessons from the Rodeo

I've been writing a series for Examiner.com on photographing the rodeo, and in the course of researching this photographic niche I've had some interesting conversations with rodeo photographers.  Louise Serpa, who lives and works here in Tucson, is a pioneer of rodeo photography and the first woman photographer to be allowed into the rodeo ring. Her photographs are famous, she's written a book about her work, and she's in the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. I called her gallery expecting to speak to a secretary about getting a publicity packet for the article and ended up speaking to Louise Serpa herself. She's 84 and coping with cancer, and yet in a couple of weeks she'll be taking her camera down to the rodeo grounds again.  She'll be photographing from the stands, not the arena this time, though. She talked about how she just started photographing because she wanted to make pictures of horses and was surprised at how many cowboys wanted to buy them. She spoke lightly about the awards and the retrospectives and the publications as if she couldn't see why all the fuss.
Then I came across the website of Rick Madsen, who was a corporate photographer until he attended a rodeo in Wyoming in 2004 and was hooked. He says that's when he discovered his passion -- capturing the images of the rodeo and its participants.  His site says "rodeo and Western photography."  On it he discusses techniques and practical issues of rodeo photography, but he also emphasizes the importance of following your passion in photography, saying that if you do, the work will come.  What do Rick Madsen and Louise Serpa teach me, whose closest brush with their kind of photography comes from photographing a cutout Stetson on a rusty fence?  I think that both these people took to rodeo photography because they loved it, followed that love, and found a very satisfying life within that niche.  And for me, whose passion is metal and leather and weathered wood, broken chairs and rusted motorcycles, the lesson holds true, as it always must:  be true to what calls you, for you can do no other.