(Western music)
(cow mooing)
- I'm a contributing photographer
to National Geographic Magazine.
I relentlessly want to understand things
and particularly things that are not part
of my sort of orbit of perception.
(twangy Western music)
(shouting)
I'm in Texas with the Hughes family seeing
what life is like here.
I'm interested in how boys learn to become men
in different parts of the world.
Certainly, a critical element of historic notions
of masculinity has been overcoming fear.
I have no idea how I'm going
to take the pictures of the bull riding.
I have no idea.
This story has an aspect of it
that is pretty unfamiliar to me,
which is kind of like sports photography.
I don't use long lenses.
I don't know how exactly I'm going to handle this thing
that happens, like, very quickly.
(shouting)
I don't think I got it.
I don't know, I thought all the elements,
you know, the halogen light, the wide open awkward space,
I thought it'd all be magic.
Sheesh.
Always, I've really strived
to explore larger subjects through individual stories.
So rodeo is a way in to something else.
A way in to looking at Rig, and Rowdy, and Ridge Hughes
and what their lives are like.
How are these boys growing up?
It's a very different kind of experience
than I had growing up.
And that, I think, in a lot of ways,
is what propels me to be as curious
as I am about these things.
I want to understand things
outside of the world that shaped and informed my outlooks.
(galloping hoofbeats)
The actual act of photography, I think,
is fairly intuitive.
The pictures that I feel end up resonating the best
are pictures that were made in situations
where it's like, I'm barely conscious of what's happening.
(chattering)
Photos are imbued with a lot,
and they're shaped and determined
by where the photographer stands
and the moment that the photographer chooses.
And that's a lot of responsibility,
because as a photographer,
you choose, bam!
(Western music)
- [Mrs. Hughes] Good job baby, good job.
- [Pete] I think the image
that a lot of people have in their mind
of ranch life in this part of Texas is hats and horses.
But Kelly and Flint, I think, are presenting their sons
with a pretty dynamic set of learning experiences
as boys and young men.