Capturing rodeo: PRCA photographer gears up for returning circuit

There’s nothing quite like the atmosphere on a rodeo night with the dust and dirt flying and fans cheering in the stands. Few people get as close to the experience as Moses Lake-born Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association photographer Roseanna Sales.

Sales has been working as a photographer with the PRCA since 2017, winning PRCA Photographer of the Year the same year. She shot her first rodeo event at the Moses Lake Roundup in August 2016.

After about 10 years of doing portraits and wedding photography, Sales said she was “burnt out.”

“When I went to school for photography at Spokane Falls (Community College), I always wanted to do extreme sports to begin with, I just never really had the opportunity,” Sales said. “That kind of pulled me toward the rodeo and I shot that first one, sort of fell in love with it and never looked back.”

Sales said there’s nothing quite like shooting one’s hometown rodeo. Moses Lake has great fans and a really great rodeo with some of the best contestants participating, she said. Sales said she believes people sometimes don’t realize just how special it is being able to watch some of the top rodeo competitors in their backyard.

Being a local, she said it’s always fun seeing familiar faces at the Moses Lake event and there’s constantly someone in the crowd yelling her name.

Sales’ PRCA schedule takes her far beyond the Grant County Fairgrounds arena to rodeos and events across the country. She has shot the National Finals Rodeo twice in her career, once in 2017 and again in 2020. Sales worked behind the scenes in 2017 and was able to shoot from in the arena in 2020.

Joined by another woman photographer from South Dakota, the two were the first all-female photographer team to shoot inside the arena at the NFR. Sales said it’s the adrenaline rush of everything with a rodeo that draws her in. Sales said she enjoys sharing behind the scenes content fans may not see from the stands.

“You never know what you’re gonna get because the stock can do whatever they want,” Sale said. “You can always get that traditional shot that cowboys know of the horse stretched out or something like that, but there’s also so much more to it, like telling the story of rodeo.”

She said this past year was particularly difficult for everyone in the rodeo industry with so many events canceled.

Sales said for many, this is their livelihood; no rodeos equals no paycheck. JJ Harrison, a barrel man from Walla Walla and friend of Sales, told her he only worked about six shows last year compared to a typically jam-packed schedule.

She said it’s been pretty neat getting back to shows this year, with crowd sizes really depending on the state or even the county she’s in at the time.

“I did one in Oregon that could only be at 20 to 25% capacity. Then I was in Red Bluff, California, and I think they were sold out at every performance,” Sales said. “Just to see people’s smiles again has been nice. To be outdoors and seeing families getting together again, I think people are definitely not going to take it as much for granted as maybe they did before.”

Right now, she said virtually everything she has on her schedule for the summer is “a go,” with a rodeo event pretty much every weekend in August and September.

Sales said a lot of people talk about the “rodeo family,” something she said is special to be a part of. Every weekend, she said she sees the same faces at these events with competitors, but there’s something unique about the rodeo.

“These guys are competing against one another, but if you look behind the bucking chutes, everyone is cheering for that guy to do well,” Sales said. “They’re cheering for their competition to beat them at that point. You don’t really see that in a lot of other sports.”

Casey McCarthy can be reached via email at cmccarthy@columbiabasinherald.com.