Mr. Kendrick belongs to a growing group of commercial and art photographers who have retreated in recent years from the ease and exactitude of the digital age and taken up the difficult, ethereal techniques of early photography, including the ambrotype (in which a unique image is created on a glass plate), daguerreotype (on polished silver) and tintype (usually on tin-plated iron ).

The pictures — made by exposing and developing the metal plates after they have been coated with a light-sensitive solution of silver nitrate — are a kind of ideal meeting of subject and style.

Mr. Kendrick, like most cowboys, is much happier when doing things the hard way.“Making these kinds of pictures, you don’t need the mental skills that you have to have a Ph.D. for,” he said. “It’s more like learning to be a carpenter. It’s work and it’s satisfying. What you get is unique, not mass-produced. You can’t repeat the process. So it’s the antithesis of digital.”

When I moved to where I am now I had to drive through a lot of open country. I'm glad my son was with me to see the sight we saw; an actual, for real, cattle drive. The cowboys were on horseback with full cowboy gear (no baseball caps or sneakers). What a fantastic sight the only thing missing was my camers.