Tag: Rodeo

North Louisiana Exhibition Center Signs

North Louisiana Exhibition Center Selects Riverbank Products to provide photos for new signage.

Just a few miles north of Interstate 20, in Ruston Louisiana sits one of the areas top rodeo and equestrian venues. The North Louisiana Exhibition Center is primarily centered around rodeo type events but also plays host to everything from dog shows and 4h events to lawn mower races and tractor pulls.

Riverbank Products is known for the quality photos we produce in the challenging and fast paced world of rodeo action photography. Over the last several years, Chris Porter, owner of Riverbank Products, has shot photos of barrel races, Youth Little Britches Rodeo, and horsemanship clinics at the North Louisiana Exhibition Center.

As facilities director, Angela Manning was gearing up to make some changes to signage inside the arena, she contacted us about some photos for use in new signs surrounding the bleachers. In total, 28 photos would be needed for the project. Other area photographers also submitted their work to be considered with several good candidates. In total 7 of the 28 images used for the new signage would come from the image archives of Riverbank Products.

Arena Signage

As a photographer and content creator, it never gets old seeing your images printed, especially printed large. We put a lot of effort into creating the highest quality photos we can produce. I appreciate Angela Manning and the North Louisiana Exhibition Center for recognizing that and using our work. Below are the images selected for the project.

Photos Selected

Contact Us

To book your next event at the North Louisiana Exhibition Center, contact Angela Manning at (318) 243-4941 or by email at manningangela@bellsouth.net

If you have an event scheduled at the North Louisiana Exhibition Center, we’d love to work with you to help promote your event with quality images and professional advertising campaigns. Give us a call or visit our Contact page for more info on how you too can have professional images, websites, or other services provided for your event with Riverbank Products.

Rodeo Saddle Bronc

My Road to Rodeo Photography

A lot of people may not know this about me, but from a very young age, I grew up riding horses and going to rodeos.

Chris Porter as a kid on a toy horse

It was the 1980’s and like many kids, I wanted to be a cowboy. My brother and I, we’d watch the Mesquite Championship Rodeo on TNN, The Nashville Network on saturdays. While some cowboys wear wranglers and stetsons, our clothes choices were a little different on saturday mornings. Underwear or pjs and cowboy boots were the official attire for the performances back then in the living room.

There were real horses too. I had two different horses as a kid. First was Tony. Unfortunately he coliced while we were gone one day and we came back to find him it was to late. Then I got scooter. If I knew then what I know now, I’d have paid more attention to that horse. He was a good one. My parents and family friends, David and Mary Beth Frisby were always involved with horses. But as a kid, I didn’t understand how good a horse that one was or how lucky I was to have it.

Crossett Rodeo Trail Ride – Chris and Richard on Quincy. Jim Porter on Peaches in the background August 1989
Me on Tony, my first horse
Me on Scooter 1990
Ryan on Bullet

My brother even got in on a little action on the our friends Richard and Elizabeths pony bullet. That little booger was something. The pony was too.

Our family had a couple cows and goats and stuff at times but never any real cattle business or anything. Still, I spent many Friday/Saturday nights at sale barns with my dad and friends. Warren, Arkansas or Lewisville, Arkansas were our normal spots that I remember. I liked Lewisville the best. Any excuse to get a Burges smoked turkey sandwich is a good one no mater what. Seriously though, the Lewisville sale barn tack sale was always one of my favorite parts. They had ropes for sale and bull whips, and hot shots. What kid doesn’t want their own hot shot? Dad never let me have my own though, My brother is lucky to have had such a good dad. Saved the boys life.

As we got older, we trail rode and dabbled in a few play days and some team penning. Our priorities changed over the years though as we got more into sports and hunting and other hobbies. My family couldn’t afford to do it all. Eventually, Dad sold off our horses and saddles and we were no longer cowboys.

The appreciation for the sport of rodeo and the lifestyle never really left though. I’ve always loved horses and have great respect for the ranchers and farmers that work hard to put meat on America’s tables.

Photography History

Photography has been a hobby of mine for a while. If I look back, its been an interest since I was a kid also. I remember my mom’s camera and getting film developed. For those of you under 20, yes everything wasn’t always instant.

At 8-9 years old, I took my only photography class one summer at South Ark Community College during a kids camp they held. I don’t remember much else from the class but we shot black and white film and walked around taking pictures one day. Later the teacher developed the film and we got to see what we had done. unfortunately I had accidentally opened my camera exposing the film to sunlight and inadvertently ruining almost all of my photos I’d taken. After this misfortunate event, i kinda lost interest at that time.

In Junior High/High school I played a little basketball but was never a serious competitor. I did however spend some time filming games and running the sound and music during games. It wasn’t until after college though that my interest in photography began to further develop into a hobby of filming and photographing hunts.

Around 2006 I got my first real camera. It was a cannon rebel. I began taking pictures of mountain bike races after my short one race career as a mountain biker. I had entered one race and crashed with a severely dislocated shoulder that required surgery to put it all back together correctly. Some family friends were still racing so I got a camera and started shooting races and hunting/fishing trips as well as some landscape stuff.

I was back in the “rodeo” world.

Photography and the outdoors, Shooting, Hunting, and Fishing industries has been my main focus for several years now. What started as a hobby became a full time job as I started Riverbank Products to help design better products and promote outdoor companies.

A couple of years ago, I began shooting barrel races. The woman I was dating at the time and her daughter barrel raced and I thought barrel racing photos would be a cool thing for us to do together as a couple. That’s the primary reason I started shooting cans other than plinking tin cans with a 22. One thing leads to another though and I got pretty decent at shooting barrel racing. Like shooting sporting clays, it’s all about timing, and I love nailing a shot as much as I do dusting a clay target. Before I knew it, I was back in the “rodeo” world.

Barrel Racing Photo

I don’t claim to be the best ranch hand that ever lived. Or an expert rider, roper or anything else. I’m far from it, but I think there is a little bit of cowboy in a lot of us. It gets in your blood. The sense of adventure and hard work is at the core of the cowboy way. Grit and determination lead the way through the adversity we face as the faith the Lord gives us and everlasting hope to keep on going.

Current Rodeo Photography

I was honored to have been selected to shoot the LRCA Finals Rodeo last fall at the Louisiana State Fair. There were other photographers in the running to shoot the event to have even been in the running was an honor. That was the largest rodeo I’ve shot to date and it was a blast. While shooting this rodeo, I had the opportunity to meet several people who encouraged me to look into PRCA rodeo photography.

I’ve since done that and I reached out to PRCA Photographer Robby Freeman. Robby invited me to come shoot the Stampede at the Ike rodeo with him in West Monroe, LA. It was a lot of fun shooting with Robby. You can view his photos from the rodeo on his website at www.twitedf.com. My photos from the same event can be found in my gallery below

Robby and I have different backgrounds and a different eye. His timing especially of rough stock is much better than mine and its’ something I’m working on. Robby is a very professional photographer with years of experience in the PRCA world and a fun guy to work with.

In an interesting twist, he used to referee my high school basketball games about the time I was getting out of horses. Its funny how God works things out and brings things together in a circle. I left horse stuff 20+ years ago for sports and other stuff. Robby was involved in the same sports I was involved with. He now has 15+ years of rodeo photography experience and now we’re both in rodeo photography.

I’m eager to shoot more barrel races later this month and looking to shoot some more rodeos.

The process of becoming a PRCA Photographer is quite involved. Just being honest, I don’t know if I’m ready for that. From an artistry in photography standpoint I can hang with most. There are some technical timing details in a few key areas of rodeo Photography that I personally feel like I need to improve before going all the way to PRCA. That’s also the thing that I like. I’m enjoying the process of learning rodeo photography. The action is fun. The sense of danger of getting run over by a bull is fun. I’m not 20 years old anymore so I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to get in the arena but its defiantly something I’m enjoying right now.

I am actively seeking additional rodeos to shoot through the LRCA and other rodeo circuits. Would love to shoot some more events. My photos from the Stampede at the Ike are below. If I can help you in anyway, Contact us.

Stampede at the Ike PRCA Rodeo

Barrel Racing Photos for Social Media – Common practices that are not ok

Friends of the Mac 2019

I get asked a lot about digital versions of my photos for facebook use. I also see a lot of people taking photos of their printed photos or photos of my computer screen at the runs for facebook. Or even screenshots of images from a website or facebook.

I hate having to address this type of thing because I’m a very giving kinda guy, and this is not directed at any one person but this is just not cool y’all. Although this seems common for barrel racing photos, these same issues affect all of my photos and other photographers as well. Some photographers may have different views on the use of their copyrighted images so if in doubt always check with the photographer.

We live in a social media world. I understand the desire for social media photos. I understand the culture we live in and that we want to share our lives with our friends as soon as possible. But lets face it, these photos of photos always look terrible compared to the actual photo. I know you love your horse and are proud of your run. Taking action photos in these settings is very difficult anyway and a photo of a photo of you run is not the best way to share the success of you run with your friends that you can be proud of. So help me help you!!!

Purchasing Images for Use

Digital versions of my photos are available for purchase online as well as prints. I offer several different digital options and licensing options of photos. This ranges from small easily sharable photos all the way up to the original image. I also offer personal licensing and commercial licensing options if you’d like to use my images when you get ready to sell a horse or if you have a sponsored product that you need help marketing. If you contact me, I can even do custom editing or graphics to help you better market your events or products.

Online digital orders such as these, do not contain a watermark and you are free to share those photos anywhere you like provided you comply with the personal vs commercial use licensing agreement.

How to Share an Image

As an added service, most of the time, If you order photos online I try to pick the best image ordered and post it to facebook or instagram so when you order from me, you are getting a digital version as well that I don’t mind you sharing directly from my facebook page.

The images that I post do have a small watermark at the bottom and if you save the photos and create your own post, please don’t edit this out but you are welcome to share that image so long as you tag me or my page in your post.

The preferred method is to just share directly to your page from my original post. This gets the image on your page and still contains a link back to my page which helps us both.

This image shows a recently purchased photo that was shared to facebook on the Riverbank Products page and shared to my personal facebook page

I appreciate the work you put into your horse and I appreciate the power and intensity of the sport. If you appreciate the images I take, the best way to show that is to share the love by purchasing the images. I work hard to get the best profesional images I can but if it’s not profitable, then I can’t shoot barrel racing events. I’ll be more than happy to help you in anyway I can if you’ll just ask.