This portrait called “Boot the Cowboy” was shot at the Grand Canyon Ranch, which is located just west of Grand Canyon’s West Rim, close to Meadview, Arizona.
“Boot,” as he calls himself, is a working cowboy on the ranch. The ranch also accommodates a limited number of guests, many who visit the nearby Grand Canyon to the east and Lake Meade to the west.
Boot, who I met for the first time that weekend, is a really cool, friendly person and he was game when I asked him if we can do some shooting. I had my professional gear with me when visiting my family who were on a road trip, but I was naturally more set on shooting in and around the Grand Canyon that weekend. Luckily, I also brought a Speedlight with me…
The gear used for the shot was a Nikon D800 with a Nikkor 24-70mm f-2.8G set at 50mm. ISO 100, f-3.5 and 1-500 sec. It was shot in mid-morning, so I had somewhat dragging light coming from camera right, and recruited our babysitter to hold a Nikon Speedlight SB-600 flash to camera left to lighten up the shade and for improved contrast.
The image was post-processed in Lightroom 4 and converted to black-and-white using a Nik Silver FX Pro 2 plugin.