Last year I went to one of the county fairs for the sake of watching and shooting some bull riding. I had a great time doing it and when I saw it was happening again I had to request a day off of work. One of the organizers had seen my shots last year and I was lucky enough to meet him and be able to gain better access to the ring than I had last year. Instead of being behind two fences I was actually behind the gates and almost in the ring. There was a fence of one inch pipes between me and a raging 2,000lb animal, it was a thrill and a half.  The event was exciting though, some great rides and action and there was even more excitement by the addition (against organizer’s wishes from what I understand) of an audience participation event dubbed “The Ring Of Fire”. It happened to not end well this time and a young woman was airlifted to the hospital as a precaution after being trampled by a bull.  Things ended well for her though, she won the prize from the game, got a helicopter ride and one hell of a story to tell. I hate to say I don’t know if these pictures do it justice for the access I had, I think I may have over thought things a little when composing and figuring out exposures. I ran in to small problems with the camera also, it didn’t want to focus at one point so I missed one full ride and some great passes with the bull from the bull fighters.

You’re here to see pictures though and rather than post a few here I’ll just add a link to the gallery they’re all in:

Xtreme Team Bull Riding Photo Gallery

If you happen to know who any of the people in the images are comment on that image, I can tag them in the metadata and caption and hopefully a search engine will pull that image up if they do a search for their own name.