6 Over 60: Brenda Allen

Brenda Allen was the first woman chosen as the official photographer of the NFR in 1981. She went on to photograph the Finals four more times, both in Oklahoma City and Las Vegas when it moved to Nevada in 1985. Among numerous other accomplishments, she went on to become the official photographer of the USTRC for more than twenty years, and only just retired from professional photography in 2016 at the age of 74.
As a wife, mother to two, and a schoolteacher, Brenda didn’t set out to make history in the arena. But her camera savvy, attention to detail, and love of the excitement of sports made her the woman for the job. Brenda’s husband, Carl Allen, built a dark room in their home and enjoyed photography himself, but passed the camera along to Brenda so he could coach Little League football. She photographed the games and took team photos, and her familiarity with photography landed her a job with a photographer in New Jersey, where she and Carl lived at the time. She worked as a darkroom technician until Carl, who worked for Trans World Airlines, was transferred to California. “That’s where Carl met up with Jack Roddy and a few others he knew from way back in high school, and he started roping again,” says Brenda. “I was in my forties. I was teaching school, and I went along and sat on the fence and watched him rope. I started taking pictures, and I’d go home and develop them. The next week I’d take them back to the guys and started selling them. But then I was falling asleep in the classroom. I decided to take a sabbatical and the school said to come back when it [photography] didn’t work out, but it did. I got my PRCA card in 1978.”
Although it had taken her 4 colleges and 16 years to finish her teaching degree due to moving for work, Brenda only taught for 5 years before discovering her passion for action photography. She traveled with Carl to his rodeos and honed her photography skills through trial and error, one of few women working a rodeo from behind a camera. She had been photographing rodeos for about a year when she received her PRCA card in 1978 at the recommendation of Jack Roddy, Dale Smith, and Dick Yates. Just two years later in 1980, she was the first woman to win ProRodeo Sports News’ Best Action Photos award and a silver buckle sponsored by Frontier Airlines. She shot the NFR from the sidelines, and in 1981, she was chosen as the official NFR photographer. “I just treated it like another rodeo. It was exciting to be a part of it—really exciting,” Brenda recalls. “My husband went with me and sold pictures at the NFR.” Like any other rodeo, Brenda asked for a hotel room with no windows in the bathroom so she could set up her darkroom there. Otherwise, she came prepared with tin foil to cover the windows. She kept meticulous records of all her NFR photos. “I had a piece of paper and a pen in my pocket, and I’d pull it out and make a note every time I shot.” This, added to the tasks of changing and rewinding her film every 36 shots—sometimes while climbing a fence to get out of the way of a human or animal athlete barreling towards her—made for plenty excitement of her own to manage. If it was an indoor rodeo, Brenda also had heavy batteries strapped to her belt to run her flash.
While Brenda was run over by a barrel racer, her person and equipment mostly unharmed, she jokes that most of her close calls came from the fence rather than an animal. “In Sonora, California, I climbed a fence that made an alleyway where the bulls came through, and they were knocking the fence. It knocked me headfirst into the alley and I was hanging from the fence by my knees. Every time I tried to get up, the bulls would hit the fence and I couldn’t get up. John Growney the stock contractor was just laughing. It was totally quiet in the stands and everybody was watching. John Growney wanted to know if I’d do that act the next day.”
Someone else’s mishap, that of world champion bull rider Charlie Sampson, landed one of Brenda’s photos in a national magazine. Brenda was photographing the 1983 Presidential Command Performance Rodeo in Landover, Maryland, with President Ronald Reagan in attendance, when Charlie Sampson suffered a severe head injury from his bull. Brenda happened to capture the historic accident on film. And while the photographers were instructed not to photograph the president directly, Brenda managed to position herself so that he was in the background of some of her photos.
Along with rodeo, Brenda photographed other professional sports events including football, baseball, hockey, and the Indie 500, as well as photographing the start of the of CART Long Beach California Grand Prix from the pace car in 1989. She loved being a part of and capturing the excitement that came with each sport, but especially loved the thrills of rodeo and the lasting opportunities it brought. In 1988, she was hired as the official photographer of the USTRC, which she worked until 2016 when she couldn’t climb the fence anymore. Her sports photography has also been used by television networks ABC, CBS, and NBC, and even BBC, ESPN, and CBC.
“I had a great career and really enjoyed it,” says Brenda. She particularly loves that rodeo introduced her daughter, Veronica, to her husband, world champion bareback rider Lewis Feild, because Veronica helped her mother sell rodeo photographs. “My grandson is Kaycee Feild, and I tell him that the only reason he’s here is because his mom worked for me selling pictures,” Brenda says with a laugh. She occasionally gets calls from people who have found proofs of their photos that they want developed—one as far back as 1993—which Brenda can still develop with the right information. She and Carl have made their home near Denton, Texas, since 1984, and when she’s not hunting for a long-lost photo, she can be found working in her large garden.