CHEYENNE DOG SOLDIER

Professional powwow dancer's authentic tribal facepaint, feathered headdress and colorful cultural regalias.

This is a rare contemporary photograph of a professional competitive dancer's cultural and tribal regalia in action during big-prize-money dance competition on a Southern California Indian reservation.

Photographed on an Indian reservation pow wow grounds in 2005.

THIS IS AN UNPOSED ACTION SHOT DURING DANCE COMPETITION.

Mr. Ernest signed a commercial model release on this series for the sensitive nature of the imagery.

PRODUCTION NOTES:

Camera: Nikon D70 SLR, .nef RAW f/4.5, 1/125th sec, iso 400 (it was pretty dark at 6:45 PM on Sept. 11, 2005).

He was about 5 feet away from me when I took this photo.

Photoshop: Edited in Adobe Camera RAW, 16-bit AdobeRGB, in Photoshop adjustment layers to preserve as much original color and pixel quality as possible.

Archived: In .psd adjustment layers (16 bit RGB) -- when I opened this master file back up in 2026 (20 years later) to post this higher resolution copy -- all my edits were in place and I was able to re-tweek them on much newer generation LCD IPS screens with no loss in color data from my original edits.

Photo, scan, design by professional pow-wow photographer Gary G. Ballard, San Diego, California.