Garden County Historical Society – used with permission (click for full size)

The original photo is in black and white.

Translation: everyone in it must be dead by now.

So often we must guess at what was going on back then, looking past the soft focus, grainy emulsion, and costume clothing.  It was so long ago.  It just doesn’t seem real anymore.  A case in point is this photo.  It’s a panoramic image, surely a rodeo, with cowboys mostly, lined up just so.  Some are smiling.  All are paying attention.  How long did the moment last?  All eyes are on the camera, even those in the audience.  They must have realized they were part of history that day.

What would you ask any of them about the moment this was taken?  Did everyone in town show up?  Was it hot out?  Was it the first time you had ever been in a panoramic photograph?  Most important, was it a really big deal?

On this day, in this photograph, the answer to all of the above is yes.

I should know.  I took it.  In 2006.

Panoramics — especially of people –aren’t done much anymore.  They take time and effort, something we’re short on these days.  Besides photography is hardly new and certainly not special anymore.  We have cameras everywhere now, from the one in your cell phone to the hundreds hiding in ceilings at every casino and Wal-Mart, watching your every move.

It all started when my friend, Dale Seidel called and asked if I could do a panoramic “pitcher” at the next rodeo a few months down the road.  I then forgot about it until the day came on the last weekend of July, 2006.  In his black hat, moustache and western shirt with buttons about to pop off around the waist, Dale came to me during the calf roping event and said, “You just tell me when you want the rodeo stopped and we’ll get ya lined up.”  That made me nervous.  I realized that history was riding on this.

I took a guess and told Dale we should shoot the photo about twenty minutes before sundown.  The arena has a break on the west side, allowing the last light of day to stream right in.

The chosen time came and rodeo announcer Hadley Barrett stopped the show.  A stepladder was dragged out to the west side of the arena.  I motioned for all of the performers to come right on up.  They hesitated at first but eventually came around close, in a circle.  I was using a wide lens, so the closer the better.  And what I saw was amazing.

This was the first time in my twenty-five-year career that a group this big actually paid attention to me.  But this was the 85th anniversary photo after all, so their attitudes bordered on reverence.

Everyone was staring at the black box in my trembling hands.  Trick riders in their colorful outfits were front and center, along with the stock contracter, Bennie Butler, and his hired men, all on horseback.  Around them on foot were the performers – the riders, judges, and clowns.  The audience was on its feet.  The whole place got quiet.

The Burwell Rodeo in 2006 – Photographed by Joel Sartore, Digital Stitching by Michael Jones, West Coast Imaging (click for full size)

I worked fast but at a measured pace so I wouldn’t screw up.  At the top of the ladder I turned slowly in a complete circle, shooting a single, vertical frame every few degrees using a Nikon D2X digital camera.  I did this twice.  Everything would eventually be digitally stitched together into a panorama using Photoshop.

The entire shoot lasted less than three minutes.  I waved to the announcer and he called out, “Looks like we’ve got a keeper folks!” and the crowd applauded and cheered.  In just a couple of minutes it was business as usual, meaning it was time for the chuck wagon races.

The people in Burwell have always thought about their place in time.  Of course they still farm and ranch along the Loup River, but we all know that it’s the rodeo that sets the place apart.  The theater and the motel are named for it, the rodeo grounds long ago listed as a National Historic Site.  The town braces all year for that last weekend in July.

If you go this year, be sure to look for the North Side Bar.  It’s that white, flat-fronted building on the town square, the one with the bronc rider painted on it.  Go in and order a glass of cold beer.  There on the east wall, past the cowboys and the tourists and the farmers just in from cutting hay, is their museum: panoramic photos, framed and yellowed by smoke and sunlight, each taken at a milestone in the rodeo’s march through the years.  They put a new one up last year, sized just right to match the rest.

If you’ve got some time, just ask.  They’ll tell you all about it.

This essay originally appeared in the Winter, 2007 issue of Nebraska History Magazine.