For Shalimar Diaz De Leon, sometimes the dirty hand is the photograph.
At the Wolfe City Rodeo, Diaz De Leon noticed a man who had come to the event after work. As she prepared to photograph him, he noticed his hand hanging in the frame.
“Oh wait, not my hand. It’s dirty,” he told her.
Diaz De Leon wanted exactly the opposite.
“No, it’s perfect,” she recalled telling him. “That’s exactly what I want.”
The dirt, the texture and the evidence of a day’s work are part of what draws the Royse City photographer to Western subjects in the first place.
“I want to see the true, the real, the analog feel,” Diaz De Leon said.
That approach has become a defining part of the growing body of Western photography she creates through Shalimar Photography, a business approaching its first anniversary in September.
Diaz De Leon joined KETR’s The Lede after sharing a collection of her photographs from the 2026 Wolfe City Rodeo.
Finding the rough edges
Photography began casually for Diaz De Leon. She had horses and other animals, and they became some of her earliest subjects. Friends followed, then referrals.
Eventually, she decided that if she was going to charge for the work, she should turn it into a business.
But Western photography remained a creative outlet.
With traditional portrait work, Diaz De Leon said clients understandably want to look their best. Her Western work gives her permission to do something different.
“I like that more rough feel, that texture,” she said.
Instead of smoothing away imperfections, she can emphasize them: a bit, a piece of clothing, weathered skin, dirt or some other detail that helps communicate what was happening when the shutter clicked.
That philosophy extends beyond physical details.
At the Wolfe City Rodeo, Diaz De Leon photographed people bowing their heads in prayer. She watched for nervous expressions before competition. One man caught her attention simply sitting near the breakaway cattle and watching what was happening around him.
“He was a great model, and all he was doing was just sitting there,” she said.
Those unscripted moments are precisely what interest her.
“It’s the rougher edges,” Diaz De Leon said. “It’s just what’s kind of the real side of things.”
A first rodeo through an experienced eye
The Wolfe City event presented Diaz De Leon with a new challenge: despite an existing portfolio of Western imagery, she had never photographed a rodeo.
The environment required her to apply an eye developed photographing animals, horses and Western subjects to action that could disappear in a fraction of a second.
It also gave her a chance to break in a formidable new Sony telephoto lens, the piece of equipment that initially caught KETR’s attention when we met her walking through the stands.
Diaz De Leon rarely stayed put. She photographed from the front, back and sides of the action, moving around the grounds in search of details and different perspectives.
Her experience photographing animals helped her anticipate some of what would happen next.
“I like to capture muscles,” she said, along with the places where sunlight falls and the angles that reveal an animal’s movement.
That instinct produced one of the striking images from the weekend: a bull caught in the middle of a turn, its body curved through the frame during the violent movement of a ride.
Not everything worked. She missed most of the bronc riding while she was elsewhere on the grounds.
That, too, was part of shooting a rodeo for the first time.
Photographing a real West
Western imagery comes with generations of cultural baggage. Movies, advertising and fashion have created an instantly recognizable version of the American West, often polished and romanticized.
Diaz De Leon is more interested in what happens when nobody is posing.
She recently asked to spend time photographing a farrier and horse trainer as he worked. At one point, she tried to coax a more severe expression out of him.
It didn’t work.
He was doing work he loved and couldn't manufacture the emotion for the camera.
The experience illustrates a tension Diaz De Leon recognizes in her photography. A photographer can construct a polished Western image through wardrobe, posing, location and editing. In fact, her own background gives her considerable experience doing exactly that.
As a young adult, Diaz De Leon did some modeling. Her mother worked as a makeup artist on the side, and Diaz De Leon eventually began filling in on shoots herself. Those experiences taught her about posing, wardrobe, makeup and what it feels like to be the person on the other side of the camera.
Today, she sometimes handles many of those elements herself for commercial and branding shoots.
But when it comes to her personal Western work, she gravitates toward something less controlled.
“I definitely love more of that real behind-the-scenes, like what’s actually going on,” Diaz De Leon said. “I prefer that over posed images, over-produced images.”
Making the viewer feel something
Diaz De Leon is largely self-taught, though as her business has grown she has invested in classes, lighting instruction, equipment and mentorship to expand her technical skills.
Technique, however, serves a more basic goal.
She wants the person looking at the finished photograph to feel something.
If someone in the photograph is angry or intensely focused, she wants that emotion to reach the viewer. If the image shows people praying, she hopes it conveys some of their peace. If it catches a child playing, she hopes it produces a smile.
“I want the person that’s seeing the photo to feel the emotion of what I’m trying to capture,” she said.
Her first rodeo has also created an appetite for more.
Diaz De Leon plans to photograph upcoming events in Winnsboro and Canton as she continues learning the rhythms of rodeo photography. She is particularly interested in outdoor events, where she can work with natural light.
At the same time, she hopes to expand Shalimar Photography further into commercial and branding work connected to Western life and agriculture.
The business will enter its second year this fall.
The eye behind it, though, remains drawn to the same things that brought Diaz De Leon to photography in the first place: animals, people, texture and moments that look like real life.
Even when someone thinks his hand is too dirty for the picture.
See more: KETR’s photo gallery from the 2026 Wolfe City Rodeo features Diaz De Leon’s photographs from the event.
