The roundup begins in a dizzying swirl of movement...
Hundreds of horses move as one, their hooves kicking up clouds of dust that all but swallow the horizon. Riders trace the edges of the herd, attempting to shape something inherently untamed. In these moments, the action is almost impossible to follow; animals surge in every direction, and the riders are outnumbered. Just three cowboys face a vast wild herd. Descended from an ancient breed that has lived in Turkey since 1000 BCE, these are horses that still live by their own set of rules.
For me, photographing a herd like this isn’t about capturing chaos, but about recognizing the instant it begins to resolve, when hundreds of horses create something beautiful and larger than the sum of its parts. It’s in these moments that lines begin to emerge, and silhouettes come into focus. Patterns take shape, and then a rider appears, creating a powerful visual counterpoint to the billowing dust and the herd's motion.
As the haze softens the scene, the movement becomes abstract. Horses emerge and disappear again, their forms layered together in waves of motion; no two moments are alike.
The challenge of photographing these animals, or really, of photographing any animal, is learning to anticipate movement: to read the patterns yet to be seen and to be ready when it all aligns.
Because when it does, chaos gives way to rhythm, revealing something timeless: a scene of beauty and freedom long associated with a life spent on horseback.