washington state

Early Favorite Photographs from a Guest Ranch in Washington

Yesterday was Utah’s Pioneer Day, the day the pioneers and settlers first arrived in Utah. When I was a kid, everyone I knew would wear their cowboy hats on Pioneer Day and go to the local parade to celebrate. So in deciding what fun shoot to feature on my blog today, I thought of these cool images from a recent job at a guest ranch at the top of Washington State. The ranch is called K Diamond K, and the event was a birthday weekend for Kirk with his group of friends. He had me up to shoot some photos and video of their adventure. Here are just a few of my early favorites.

After arriving and getting my gear unloaded, I saw these guys coming back from the barn. This first photo was a great way to start off the weekend.

Kathy owns and runs the place and I created this quick portrait of her the last night I was there, using some custom lighting and the twilight sky as our backdrop.

It rained every day we were there, more though the first few days. I did this selfie with my wet camera and lens and really love the dramatic sky from the storm.

This place is wonderful. It’s a working ranch, and guests are free to get outside and help each day, or just relax at the ranch house. These guys of course were all for helping and getting as much riding in as possible. The ranch needed to bring in some cattle to process (brand, castrate, and vaccinate), and that meant riding out through the canyons to find them.


This wasn’t a “nose-to-tail” horse ride where the horses are trained to take the same route every day for city slickers despite what the riders do. This involved teamwork, and what I’d consider a more expert style riding involving going up and down steep inclines on your own.

We had a number of defiant cows and overall difficult circumstances in rounding up the cattle, and the ranch hands wanted to give up on the second day. But instead this group of guys stuck it out, overcame the various problems, and ended up bringing in an unbelievable amount of cows. It was an amazing moment.

And throughout the weekend, we continually had beautiful country around us, with amazing and dramatic weather.

I ended one of the rides with some individual portraits of each guy using some custom lighting. I won’t share them all, but here’s some to show how they look.

I was really liking how these were looking so I of course got in one too.
I had a great horse named Wyatt, which I thought was a perfectly appropriate name for a horse. And these stormy skies were amazing every day. They added a lot of drama to each photograph.

The K Diamond K Ranch is a beautiful place. Here is Kirk and some friends fishing on one of the last days.

And here’s a drone selfie with everyone on the bridge to close out.

This was a great group of guys and I am grateful for my chance to meet them and hang out with them for the weekend. It made for a wonderful adventure. I’ve still got a lot to do on the video, but working on this project continually brings back a lot of great memories.

If you’ve got an event that needs to be captured and documented, give me a call at 801-728-3317. I’d love to create something wonderful for you.

And until next time, America.