This article was featured in the June 2013 publication of The Brahman Journal.
Editor’s note: The Brahman Journal is a huge fan of Rick Butler’s photography. His awesome Brahman shots have made the cover of The Brahman Journal an unprecedented three times in recent years, including last month’s May Herd Bull issue so we thought it would be fun to take a minute to get to know the man behind the camera!
Paris, Texas native Rick Butler received his first Brahman when he was 15 and has loved them ever since. He has owned and operated a few businesses such as Butler Medical Supply and Century 21 Butler Real Estate Services. For Butler, these businesses provided the luxury of travel, which in turn, inspired his growing passion for photography.
In 1982, Butler joined the American Brahman Breeders Association with a Lifetime Membership. Now, he has a great herd of registered Angus cattle in addition to his beloved Red and Gray Brahmans at Butler Polled Brahmans in Mt. Vernon, Texas. Although he loves his cattle, what he loves even more is taking photos of them.
“Brahman are the most fun to photograph because they aren’t like any other cattle out there. It’s more fun to picture Brahman than English cattle or any other breed, they are just majestic,” Butler said.
Butler started taking pictures in 1978 when he moved to Longview, Texas as a pharmaceutical representative. He got to know many people involved in the Brahman breed during his travel throughout East Texas.
Butler lived on the Happy Valley Ranch for a couple of years. During his stay, he became good friends with Rick and Debbie Reeves and took pictures of their cattle and ranch. He also spent time at 5P Farms, taking pictures of the Gir, Indu and Nelore cattle that they had.
Adding to his experience, he was hired by Walker Wilson to take registration photos of a couple hundred of his imported cattle from Brazil. It was the only time he has ever accepted payment for taking photos of cattle.
Over the years, he has never stopped photographing Brahman cattle. He is an enthusiastic proponent of polled Brahman genetics and posts the images he captures of these majestic creatures to social media. Butler gets a thrill from seeing how many people ‘like’ and ‘share’ his photos via Facebook.
He says, to his the adventure is always looking for that next shot because you never know when you are going to have something turn out that could be Brahman Journal cover photo worthy.
