Working Cowboys

[Swampy]

Twedes Cafe got me in a cowboy mood. I shot this photo last summer on a working ranch about 20 miles from my home. I was the guest of a local caterer who specializes in feeding the working cowboys. He set up a great lunch (ham, fried chicken, pole beans, yellow rice, potato salad, biscuits and guava jelly, sweet tea, and lemon pound cake).

The cowboys shown here had finished lunch and were getting ready to head out to round up more cows. There were two cow dogs that I didn't get in the shot, but they are an integral part of the whole process. These guys typically start the day at 3:30 or 4:00 AM, may drive a hundred miles to the "next" job, work until about 1:00, take about an hour and a half lunch break, then back on the job until after sundown. They will work one ranch for a day or so, then float on to the next ranch and repeat the process. For many it's a full time job drifting from ranch to ranch culling cows (separating the keeps from the ones that will go to market) round-ups for medications and new "cuts" for breeding purposes.

BTW... Lunch is traditionally provided by the ranch owner and the cowboys have favorite ranches where the food is exceptinally good. :-)

I'd love to see what you can do with this shot. There is so much detail to work with. Have fun and use your imagination

[Kraellin]

somehow i dont think of cowboys and palm trees in the same image, but ok.

i'm posting 5 images here. basically, these are all the same rendering but with different blend modes as the last stage.

craig

[Swampy]

Craig.. I like #1. Good light/dark contrast.

Re the palm trees.. Very typical around south central Florida. Wide open range for miles dotted by "bay heads" and groups of trees along canals and around ponds and low areas.

[Steve Conway]

Wonderful Florida scrub....and not a condo in sight! Love it!.

Steve

[Swampy]

Steve... I really like what you've done. How'd you do it? Almost has a smudge paint feel.

The Florida scrub does have it's own kind of beauty, doesn't it?

[Kraellin]

thanks dee dee.

and in steves, i think i see gertrudis in here. very nice.

craig

[Steve Conway]

Thanks much Swampy. It's a mixture of styles in Gertrudis Pro. I then layered and worked on blends for the final result.

I live near where Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, ("The Yearling"), lived. And she wrote lovingly of the Florida scrub and it's inhabitants.

Steve

Originally Posted by Swampy

Steve... I really like what you've done. How'd you do it? Almost has a smudge paint feel.

The Florida scrub does have it's own kind of beauty, doesn't it?

[jch71566]

Wow! I really like yours Steve!

Mine is mostly Buzzed. Enjoy!

[Steve Conway]

My thanks to Craig and JCH.

Steve

[Swampy]

Interesting, JCH. It just amazes me how some of the filters can simplify so much detail, but leave you with something that is still very comprehensible.

Steve, that's pretty country up around Cross Creek, Ocala Forest, etc. I get a kick out of the folks from up north who are amazed at how much the Ocala "horse country" looks like areas of Kentucky.

BTW there is a breed of cattle called "Santa Gertrudis" that has been bred into the South Florida Cracker range cattle. The breed holds up well in the heat and humidity, grazes well on the scrub ranges. Using Gertrudis Pro was very approriate!!! LOL

[lkroll]

Smudging is just too much work. Went back to Impressionist (djroil24 preset) and some selective cleaning and merging with the original. Also, of course, added GIMP's Bumpmapping for relief texture.

[Swampy]

Ikroll...

Very nice. Your technique "artsied" up the vegetation, but really kept detail and focus on the cowboys. Good job!

[lkroll]

That's what layers and the eraser tool's for.

I also decided to invert the bumpmap making the whites stick out.

[kiska]

I simplified and used the wind filter in PS. SA for painting.

http://www.pbase.com/ob/image/56120886

[Cassidy]

Surface Blur and added Grain minus cowboys and their horses

[philbach]

I took the original and modified it in Studio Artist using auto sketch. Overlaid that on the original in photoshop using darken blending mode

[Swampy]

Phil.. Yours has a very nice "scrubby" texture!

Cass.. I like that you isolated the cowboys from the blur. It puts the focus on them very well.

Kiska... I never thought of using the motion blur in a vertical manner. Very good!

[raniday]

Swampy, this is a very cool photo, and I played with painterly effects for a while, but it just kept feeling like a very old photo, maybe because I don't know any real cowboys Anyway, that's the direction I finally went, trying first for the look of a couple of old snapshots, one sepia and one b&w, and then I tried for an old post card, you know how the colors were never not quite right, usually too intense. Anyway, here are my efforts.

[Swampy]

Oh, Cathrine... I love the sepia! (The others are good too, but the sepia is just great). The sepia could well have been shot a hundred years ago because not much has changed in the roundup process over the years. Yeah, helicopters, all terrain vehicles, Jeeps are sometimes used, but for "catchin' cows" in bay heads and woods such as this is still best done the old fashioned way.

Thanks for thinking of it.

[Kraellin]

cat,

i like the sepia and b&w. somehow they remind me of south american cowboys, though. not sure why. the postcards i recall were usually just the opposite of what you've posted. they were always undersaturated... at least the ones i remember the most. but then, i'm remembering back to much earlier days

craig

[palms]

Swampy great photo but what i like best is your explanation, very interesting a few of my friends and I didn't know that you get cowboys in Florida just sea sun and Disney land
We are better informed now and better educated ( we got the atlas out and studied it, love hearing about different lands and culture ) mind you we didnt know ( because of the winter olympics) that Australia had snow (yep you got it we just thought sun and sea



Palms


link to tutorial for any one interested http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/photo-art-resources/12846-tutorial-link-amazing-circles-photoshop-another-fun-fad.html

[Steve Conway]

Yes we really enjoy the horse farms around Ocala, even when traveling down I-75. Driving the back roads around there is even more beautiful.

Am very familiar with the Santa Gertrudis. Have your heard of the horse called the marshtackie? Was bread by the indians in early Florida for just such backwoods-type roundups as your photo shows.

Steve

Originally Posted by Swampy

Steve, that's pretty country up around Cross Creek, Ocala Forest, etc. I get a kick out of the folks from up north who are amazed at how much the Ocala "horse country" looks like areas of Kentucky.

BTW there is a breed of cattle called "Santa Gertrudis" that has been bred into the South Florida Cracker range cattle. The breed holds up well in the heat and humidity, grazes well on the scrub ranges. Using Gertrudis Pro was very approriate!!! LOL

[Born2Run]

The first thing I thought was this could be an old photo too... So I thought I would make it worthy of being retouched in 50 years time!

http://img104.imageshack.us/img104/2521/cowboy0uc.jpg

[MargaretM]

Wonderful picture - full of folk art. Had a quick go in Photoshop. Have really enjoyed all the great versions.
MargaretM

[Swampy]

PALMS... I saw yours and named it "Working Cowboys of the World" :-) Actually, Florida is the second largest cattle producing state in the USA (Texas being first). Although areas like Omaha get a lot of publicity about cattle, they are really the processing centers. After rounding up the cattle that will be sold at local markets, the cows are then shipped off to out of state "Feed Lots" where they bulk out buy just standing in big lots and being feed prior to slaughter. (Sorry PITA devotees, it's just a fact of life). Also, much of the beef produced on the vast scrub ranges of Florida is used for "Commercial" beef...hamburgers at Mac Donalds etc.

STEVE... I'm very familiar with the marshtackie ponies. I live about 20 miles from Brighton Seminole Reservation and they still ride the descendants of the early marshtackies to work their huge cattle ranch there. There is a wonderful web site that tells much of the history of the central Florida "Crackers" Crackers

BORN2RUN... Great job making that old photo! I've seen some like it at our local museum! It really does take this photo back in time.

MARGARETM... Great Crop! It really focuses in on the cowboys. And I especially like that you didn't crop the palmetto fronds in the foreground. In your perspective they really add depth of field.

Wonderful work, folks!

[Steve Conway]

Guess were making this a Florida history lesson, but I can recommend to you a book called "A Time Remembered" that explains the early "Crackers" who settled in Florida and began rounding up strays in the mid 1800's. They would drive drove them to the coast and sell them for gold. A work of fiction but based very much on fact.

Steve

Originally Posted by Swampy

STEVE... I'm very familiar with the marshtackie ponies. I live about 20 miles from Brighton Seminole Reservation and they still ride the descendants of the early marshtackies to work their huge cattle ranch there. There is a wonderful web site that tells much of the history of the central Florida "Crackers" Crackers

[palms]

Thanks for the info very interesting and another well i never about the info listed below. will impress my friends tomorrow with this knowledge,

Originally Posted by Swampy

PALMS... I saw yours and named it "Working Cowboys of the World" :-) Actually, Florida is the second largest cattle producing state in the USA (Texas being first).

Palms

ps love all the different versions submitted

[Swampy]

Oh STEVE... That was a GREAT book! :-)