Last Night at the PRCA Awards Banquet at South Point in Las Vegas, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) honored CLN’s favorite photographer Ric Anderson with the 2016 Excellence Award for his body of work and overall contribution to the PRCA for photography this year.

Cowboy Lifestyle Network would also like to congratulate Ric Andersen for all his hard work while continuing to deliver the most stunning pictures to the entire world!

“I would like to thank my wife Linda that has been my rock and each and every one of you that has supported me in my work more ways than one. Being honored with the 2016 Excellence Award, well this is for all the people that believed in me, thank you! What an amazing year 2016 was for me and I can’t wait till 2017 adventures!”

Ric Andersen is from Prince of Wales Alaska. In 1992, Andersen moved to Phoenix, Arizona to pursue a college degree in business and has never moved from the Valley of the Sun. He started showing interest in photography when he was 10 years old.
As a young boy, Andersen was always getting caught taking his grandfather’s 35mm camera and ended up breaking it one day (ooops!) so he bought Ric his very own kit camera to play with when he replaced his.

From 1981 to 1985, Anderson shot for fun and always kept a camera with him while he attended school. From 1996 to 1998, he started semi-pro shooting sports in Phoenix. He went with his good friend Hank Rafalski to his first rodeo to take photos at a Honeycutt PRCA Rodeo in Cave Creek AZ. Let’s just say from that point on, he was instantly hooked. It took him the next 2 years to get his Pro Card from PRCA. Roy Honeycutt was the man that signed for his PRCA card back in 1998. Andersen then traveled to as many PRCA Rodeo’s he could to fill his permit in Arizona and California.

A big thank you to Gene Hyder and Chuck Goerke for taking the time to teach me the art of shooting a good rodeo image and how to work the arena safely to get the best angles for all my images.