February 8, 2026

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

This morning shortly after sunrise, Lisa had us trying a new technique to most of us, called “panning”. For the panning technique to work, you need to set the camera to a slow shutter speed such as 1/40, 1/30, or even 1/25. In this case for galloping horses, try to focus on the rider and fire multiple shots as the camera is moved while tracking, trying to stay focused on the rider. The best photo, if done correctly, is that the horse and rider should be in fairly sharp focus and the background is blurred. Here are some of my best captures. These look great but there are quite a few throw aways that didn’t work,

After a break, the cowboys and cowgirls herded the horses back and forth in a desert location. I especially liked the white horses.

We had some more time to do portraits. The second, third, and fourth photos are iPhone portrait mode photos and using special effects in the iPhone editing for development.

Believe it or not we had a visit by the Lone Ranger and Tonto.

I really like the above iPhone photo of the Lone Ranger. A little bit lower Ashley is showing off a little bitty standing on her horse.

We finished the workshop with an authentic Chuckwagon dinner prepared as they did in the 1800s. The cook and her daughter have won various competitions with their meals. She made brisket, a vegetable medley, corn bread, and topped it off with a delicious peach cobbler. At the end we had a little cowboy music.

Thanks for bearing with me on the last three posts as I had incredible time taking the photos. The workshop exceeded my expectations by a good margin.