Click Thompson renowned for his rodeo images

A date with a girl and a conversation with a co-worker. During Christopher “Click” Thompson’s life, there have been a lot of key moments, but none shaped his journey like those two milestones in 2010.

The first is a bit comical now. Back in Virginia where he grew up, Thompson was trying to think of something different for a date he was planning. That weekend, a pro bull riding event happened to be coming through town. Thompson thought it would be a unique experience to share with someone.

He was right. But the relationship that blossomed that night wasn’t with his date; rather, it was with rodeo.

“Immediately, I was just hooked,” Thompson said of the competition. “It was kind of the thing that your ignorance made you fascinated with everything about it, from the smells to what you saw and everything like that.”

And the date?

“That girl now is my sister-in-law, because my brother married her sister,” he said with a laugh.

The excitement of seeing the action first-hand sparked Thompson’s interest. But he got a better understanding of rodeo from a co-worker who rode bulls as a pastime, competing in a regional association with events in Virginia and a few nearby states. The co-worker invited Thompson out to a competition, where he finally got to be up close to the animals and really get a feel for the industry.

Over the next few years, Thompson found himself enamored with the sport. He would shoot regional rodeos on the weekends and even got connected with the staff at Professional Bull Riders, which led to him photographing events as that tour came through the south, starting in 2013. By 2016, he was invited to be a photographer at the PBR Finals in Las Vegas.

Thompson had been working as a full-time photographer for the Department of Defense, for six years. In 2019, he decided it was time for a seismic life change.

“If you tell people, ‘Hey, I’m going to leave this good-paying government job to go be a rodeo photographer,’ they just don’t have the information to compute that,” Thompson joked. “They’re like, ‘What are you trying to say?’ They think it’s a fad. This is not a long-term anything.

“It’s one thing if you tell people you’re going to be a bull rider or a rodeo contestant. It’s another thing if you tell them you’re going to photograph these people.”

Six years later, it’s a decision that has paid dividends. Thompson is working his fourth consecutive Wrangler National Finals Rodeo this week, after earning his fourth straight Photographer of the Year honor at the PRCA Awards banquet on Wednesday. He also served as a substitute photographer for a portion of the 2021 NFR.

“It’ll say on my jacket that it’s my fourth year, but I always tell people it’s my fifth because they bucked horses three times and I shot four performances that year, so I count it secretly,” he joked.

Now operating out of Weatherford, Texas, Thompson uses his address in the Lone Star State as a place to collect mail and occasionally rest his head. Like the cowboys and cowgirls he photographs, the rodeo lifestyle is a whirlwind experience that comes with unending travel and plenty of hazards.

During the 2025 regular season, he visited 33 PRCA events across North America, attending 109 total performances. That’s up from 23 events and 74 performances in 2024. None of that includes the work he does photographing other events, requests for portraits or clinics he holds to help aspiring photographers develop their skills.

That level of demand led to a few ailments this year. He battled gout during the summer, woke up in Cheyenne with a left knee that seemingly wouldn’t bend, and developed tennis elbow so severe that he couldn’t bend it far enough to touch his face at one point.

The rigors might not always make the job easy, but it is most certainly rewarding.

Thompson is grateful to experience and document the Western lifestyle. Sometimes, it means standing on the arena floor inside the Thomas &Mack Center with 18,000 eyes intently watching. It can also mean dodging a loose bull or unanticipated bucking horse in Pendleton, Oregon.

He sees his photos in magazines and on websites. He also notices when they become the new profile photo for competitors on their social media platforms. It’s a rewarding feeling, matched only by the friendships he’s developed along the way.

All these years later, it’s hard to believe that these moments spawned from one date and one conversation.

“It’s one of the few industries where I know you’ll meet someone one day and you’re like, ‘Man, as long as nothing weird happens, I’ll probably know this person the rest of my life.’ In the rodeo business, we’re all kind of trauma bonding I guess,” Thompson said. “I’m very much into cowboy culture because it’s about stories, it’s about legacy. It’s the idea of how do you live forever.

“If you’re not in a story, your name doesn’t live on and you just become dust. I’ve always kind of appreciated that. And I thought, ‘Well, how can I do that for myself?’ As a photographer, we are the people who help document history. You don’t think about it in the moment.”

But it obviously crosses his mind now.

“I think people will always remember you for who you are, not what you did,” Thompson said. “To be involved, it’s a legacy thing I’ve always appreciated.”