This Western Lifestyle Cowboy image was shot for The Justin Hat Company for catalog, web & ad use. This was the second shot of the day. At 4:30 am we loaded all the vehicles at the hotel & drove some 60 minutes to this location, at 8700' elevation, on National Forest property in Colorado. The wranglers driving a truck pulling a trailer with the horses and tack followed us there. Every time I changed locations my styling crew changed the models wardrobe & the wranglers changed horses and saddles so it would not be immediately apparent that all the shots were shot on one day.

I scouted this location for 3 days in a row getting the best times of the day to start to shoot. This way I could get a lot of shots in a very short time frame and shot in good light.

Gear: Canon professional digital camera, 400mm f2.8 @ f4.5 Canon lens 200 ISO and then processed using Photoshop CS3 and using the Adobe RAW converter. One of my assistants is holding a Large California Sunswatter (silk on a stick) overhead that softens the light and keeps the white hats from blowing out.

If you would like to use this image, or any of my images for mock or comp use, please just ask. There is never a charge for this service. Educational use is permitted without charge, unless published, but please ask first. All commercial use is available only with a limited copyright release prior to use from the copyright holder, Steve Thornton. Thanks for looking!