After more than two decades watching cowboys do battle with 2,000-pound bulls, Andy Watson still feels a rush of adrenaline every time he steps into the arena.
“When you watch a guy make a great ride, you listen to this crowd roar – that electricity will make your hair stand up on the back of your neck,” he says.
As the official photographer for Professional Bull Riders (PBR), Andy has captured every major moment in PBR history – but he’s still hunting for the perfect photo.
Watch the video to head into the arena with Andy at Madison Square Garden…
Behind the Scenes with the Storytellers
Over the years, Andy has built an archive of 1.5 million images. While he’s on the road shooting 40+ PBR events a year, his wife, Jacey Watson, manages the archive from their home in Bozeman, Montanta. Jacey crops and edits, tags all of the images with relevant metadata, and adds them to Libris by PhotoShelter to make them available to everyone who needs them.
Thanks to Andy and Jacey’s workflow, people across the PBR organization can get the photos they need, whether they’re posting shots on Instagram seconds after a great ride or digging deep into the archive for a celebration of the brand’s 25th anniversary.
“They’re being used for everything – there’s social media, there’s website, there’s media, there’s marketing, they’re on the sides of the semis, they’re up and down billboards up and down the road when we go into a market and start to advertise there, they’re in all the papers, they’re on TVs, all the sponsors use them,” says Andy. “We do 5 to 7,000 photos every three months through the system through the 150 or so people that are on our PhotoShelter account.”
And as the team uses these images across platforms, they have a powerful ripple effect on this fast-paced, fast-growing sport. Andy says photography is crucial to drawing people into the arena for the first time.
“Their curiosity gets the best of them,” he says. “And once you get them here, they’re hooked.”
Watch the entire on-demand webinar
So how do they do it? Watch the on-demand webinar to go behind the scenes with Andy and Jacey and find out how they created a visual storytelling powerhouse with PBR.
In this webinar, Andy and Jacey share:
- A breakdown of their gear, tools and creative strategy
- Their tips for how to maximize the impact of events with visual storytelling
- Takeaways from 25 years covering one of the fastest growing sports
Watch Now:
Cover image by Andy Watson, bullstockmedia.com.
