General News
6 August, 2024
Meet the Kiwi behind the lens at the biggest rodeo in the country
It's a high pressure job when you have just seconds to capture the perfect shot.
Almost all of the photos in this week's special Mount Isa Mines Rodeo liftout were taken by the bloke at the top of your screen.
Stephen Mowbray is a genius with a camera and there is no doubt he will one day feature in the Isa Rodeo Hall of Fame as one of the greats of the Outback event.
But how did a Kiwi fella, who lives in Sydney, end up with one of the best jobs in the world?
With a bit of luck and lot of hard work, it turns out.
This is Mowbray’s 11th official year as the chief photographer for the Mount Isa Mines Rodeo, but it was his unofficial work that helped land him the gig.
“I think it was in 2012 and I’d heard about this rodeo and I just thought ‘you know what, I’m going to go and have a look’, so I went up there at my own expense,” he recalled.
“I wrote ahead, knowing that you needed to have accreditation and sent some photos of what I had done. Susan Fuller was the media manager at the time and God love her, she gave me accreditation and was just really lovely and helpful.
“Ben MacRae was a local fella and he was the official photographer that year and he had never covered a rodeo before.
“From memory, he was looking for a second shooter and it might have been on Facebook where he put the call out and he ended up with a lady called Cherie Reeves.
“Well she was Ryan at the time but now she’s the woman behind Purple Fair Imagery (who shot the Curry Merry Muster this year).
“So Cherie was shooting with Ben and I was just there taking a few photos, seeing how I went.
“At one point he was photographing the broncs from inside the arena – he was getting them exploding out of the shoots – and he had two cameras.
“He put his biggest zoom lens camera in a corner against the fence where you’d expect it to be reasonably safe, but it got stepped on by a bronc and snapped it, like f--ked it completely.”
This is where Mowbray stepped in.
“All Ben had left was this pissy little camera that really wasn’t much good for anything and I had the toy box and I said ‘Ben, hey grab this ... you’ve got a job to do’ and he continued to do the rodeo and I continued doing what I was doing,” he recalled.
“I had enough gear that it didn’t really impact me.”
When the dust settled on the rodeo and Mowbray had shared his own pictures with the committee, Natalie Flecker offered him the gig as the official photographer.
“And so we did a contract and all that stuff and here I am 12 years later doing it again.”
Amazingly, Mowbray has only been a professional photographer for about 13 years – the 62-year-old only took it up late in life after life as an amateur while working for Coca-Cola.
Even then, his career change was somewhat accidental.
When a relative of his wife’s died, leaving them some money, she encouraged him to buy the lens he had his heart set on.
Mowbray, who knew nothing about the media at the time, turned up at the Sydney Royal Easter Show and started taking photos of the rodeo from the crowd until he was approached by a cowboy in the arena to take a team photo.
The naive snapper jumped the fence and took the pictures, but landed himself in hot water because he didn’t have credentials.
Luckily, someone at the Sydney Show felt sorry for Mowbray and gave him a media pass and told him he was welcome back.
As it turns out, the person who tapped him on the shoulder that day was the CEO of RM Williams at the time, a company that also owned Outback magazine.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Not only has Mowbray become one of the best rodeo photographers in the world, but he is also a renowned equestrian shooter.
While he loves the Isa Rodeo, his true love is back in his native land, where he is the social media admin for New Zealand Rodeo.
Unlike Australia, which seems to have events year-round, the New Zealand rodeo circuit is usually contained to summer and early autumn.
“Last year I went across on Boxing Day and I stayed there for a couple of weeks and did like eight rodeos,” Mowbray said.
“Then I went back in March for the national finals.
“When we’re in rodeo season, I’m typically writing posts from here in Australia, but (the trips) give me a body of images of the current cowboys competing so that I could then work from my office and write results.”
There is no busier time than Isa Rodeo week, though.
It usually starts on the Saturday prior with the arena ball, although that was cancelled this year.
However, Mowbray was at the Hall of Fame dinner on Tuesday night and was due at the Mount Isa Street Parade on Wednesday.
From today, it’s non-stop, starting with early round events this morning, followed by the Indigenous Rodeo Championship and the Rodeo Rock Concert.
It’s a trend that continues until Sunday afternoon.
“Yeah, I’m shooting all day and then I’ll get back and finish at 9pm or 9.30 and then I’ll go back to the hotel, download cards, have a shower, and then I’ll work till 4am trying to get up some stuff (on social media) that people wake up to,” Mowbray said.
Despite his talent, there is still plenty of pressure at the biggest rodeo in the southern hemisphere.
Mowbray is expected to deliver action photos of the winners and produce images that will be sent around the world.
That means he has eight seconds to get it right in a bull ride, but steer wrestling and roping events can be over in much less time.
“Sometimes you miss the shot and I do get angry with myself, but I think that’s part of the beauty of rodeo,” he said.
“What makes rodeo so exciting is that if you blink you miss it and that’s why I love it and I think that’s why so many people love it.”