February 6, 2026

The Photo Workshop, “Magic of Cowboys” was led by Lisa Langell with an incredible array of other instructing photographers, cowboys and cow girls, and volunteers at the Don Donnelly Ranch in Gold Canyon, Arizona. We had 20 participant photographers from all over the country.

The first morning we started early with the man and wife team, Duncan and Bonnie, from Montana crossing and recrossing a ridge so that we could photograph their silhouettes.

As the sun rose it put a nice rich color to the side of the Superstition Mountains.

The cowboys and girls pushed the longhorn cattle in the desert in front of us. It was somewhat hard to get photos where they were not all bunched together.

As the morning progressed I was able to get some good photos with a minimum of mergers.

There were quite a few opportunities to get singular shots of the cowboys. I especially liked the ones swinging the lariats.

The covered wagon was built by the head cowboy, Duncan from Montana. He used the methods current in the 1800s. This other couple loaded it into a horse trailer and brought it to Arizona. They have over the years traveled 1600 miles in various covered wagon trail rides. It really added to the backgrounds in many photos.

Then we had various portrait sessions with various lighting and backdrops.

The above and below photos are called Low Key photos where the background is dark and because of the lighting some parts of the person is also in shadow. In the above photo of the cowgirl with the white background this is called High Key where the background is over exposed.

The photo below is Duncan and his wife Bonnie from Montana. Duncan is the head of the cowboy crew. They do these kinds of things for a living and have been in many movies, rodeos, and stuntmen. You can tell that Duncan has had a rough life because of the scars on his face and arms and the eye patch.

Sunset is approaching as the long shadows are evident.

The last group of photos were taken almost directly looking into the sun. The whole idea was to get the yellow effect with the dust and the sun. Many of them are silhouettes. Some look better in black and white. I tried various developing techniques but most resulted in dark faces.

Hope that you enjoyed this selection out of about four hundred photos and stay tuned for day 2.