The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
A cowgirl's roping and riding starts her shooting up the ranks in a new career.
By CRISS ROBERTS croberts@thehawkeye.com
from The Hawk Eye, Burlington, Iowa -used with permission
GLADSTONE - Ask Marlene McChesney how long she's been riding and she looks dazed.
McChesney, 49, doesn't remember a time when she wasn't on a horse. She makes her living on horseback, running cattle herds with the help of two cowboys.
She knows horses. She raises quarterhorses, in fact. And she knows cows. It's those two things that have led to a surprising third career for McChesney - art photographer.
By some twists of fate as quick as a mother cow headed back to her calf, McChesney found herself going beyond snapshots to an invitation to compete in one of the biggest cowboy art venues in the world, a spot in a gallery show during the upcoming National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas.
This is how it started: She has pictures of the quarterhorses she's selling on her Web site, www.doublemquarterhorses.com, and wanted to add some pictures of the Henderson County ranch with the horses working. She climbed on her horse, grabbed a digital and set out with the two cowboys who she works with, brothers Paul and John Hennefent from Smithshire, Ill.
Those first pictures looked amateurish ... shooting action is tough, but shooting it while you're on a horse that wants to be rounding up cattle is even tougher. She got a better camera and started shooting again. After 2,500 shots later, she had four pictures that looked straight out of a pro's portfolio. When she brought them to Cameraland in Burlington, they urged her that they were not only good, they were sell-able.
Painterly is style, an eerie cloud of dusts rises up from the riverbottom where the Hennefents were working with the family's cowherd in her favorite pictures. The location is Henderson County, but the heart of the photos is in the wild west.
"So many people say "It doesn't look like it's here,' " she said.
People seldom see herdsmen on horseback here. Most cattle operations round up their herd on four-wheelers or in pickups. McChesney believes using horses is less-stressful on the cattle. And while the Hennefents can break out a sick calf in 10 minutes, giving it the medication it needs from the saddlebags, it can take up to three hours to chase down a cow on foot and by truck.
She did it that way before the brothers hired on.
With two artist sisters, she was wondering where her gift was. One sister is a painter, the other a writer.
"And I'm like, how did I miss this gene?" she said.
That artistic gene may have been recessive, but once it was birthed, it grew quickly. She began offering wall-sized photographs of her art, some on canvas, which enhances the painting-like quality of the pictures.
It's her cowgirl's sixth sense of how the cows and horses will move that allows her to capture moments that are true.
"I call this one "Damn it, I'm Tired of It,' " she said of the photo of one of the Hennefents chasing down a cow that didn't want to be cut out of the herd. Both subjects are persistent, proud and stubborn in their face-off.
The cowboy wins. Those victories are probably part of the reason for her quick acceptance into Cowboy Photographers and Artists International, a juried organization which will help promote her art.
At night, late at night after the cattle stop roaming, she looks for new markets. She emailed her pictures to the art-specialty magazine, Horses in Art, hoping to have one included.
"They're going to do an article on me," she said, clearly delighted.
A gallery in Las Vegas will be showing her work during the National Finals Rodeo.
Prints will sell for $250. The same print on canvas goes for $350. The editions of her three favorite works will be limited.
And she keeps shooting, bringing her camera on the job. While the Hennefents tagged the newborn calves last week, she hung back and took a few pictures when she wasn't helping keep the cows calmed.
She knows how lucky she is.
"There's a lot of women who want to be doing what I'm doing," she said from the top of her horse.
It isn't the photography alone, she knows, nor is it spending her day on a horse. Part of the envy is because her days are magical days where she lives a life that was born in legend. To be a cowgirl - a real one, not one of the weekend rodeo circuit variety - seldom happens, particularly in the Midwest. But to be a cowgirl who makes a living at it and adds to the mystique through her camera, that's a dream come true. Others may have tried, but it takes a trailerful of unique circumstances to succeed.
She succeeds because it's the cattle and horses that come first in her photos. She succeeds because she knows as much about both as she does about life.
"If I didn't have this opportunity, I wouldn't be doing it," she said. "I've been blessed. I just feel there's another hand in this."
by John Gaines/The Hawk Eye 4(photo courtesy The Hawk Eye)
Photographer and rancher Marlene McChesney uses her digital camera to capture the tagging of calves on her family farm near Gladstone.