More than 40 years ago, in a small town in France, little 7-year-old Chris Elise sat with his grandfather, watching dubbed TV westerns and falling in love with cowboys.

He began dreaming of coming to America.

Chris had always been fascinated by photography, a hobby of his father. In 1997, his father tragically passed at 46, and Elise took possession of his dad’s Nikon FE camera and one 50mm lens. He shot portraits, including musician Ravi Coltrane – son of John Coltrane – and dabbled in wedding photography.

One day a girlfriend asked about his biggest dream. Chris finally heard his voice saying aloud what had always been deep inside: “My dream is to live in America.”

It was go time. He’d need to support himself. He loved that Nikon. And sports. Why not put the two together and make a run at a new career using the universal languages of pictures and sports to cross the ocean?

“French was my mother language, so if I drop the pen and pick up the camera, I don’t have the language barrier,” he explained. “I had always loved sports, so it was an easy way for me to walk into the USA and not have that barrier.”

Elise hooked up with a photo agency in California and began covering the NBA for the French basketball magazine Reverse. Several sports agencies took notice. He became a French photo correspondent in the U.S., covering pro hoops while going on assignment to cover sports in exotic places like the Sahara desert, Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

Elise is now a renowned sports photographer, and in mid-November, he drove his Chevy pick-up from Los Angeles to Texas to shoot the PBR World Finals as his new favorite sport played in a giant football stadium usually hosting the Dallas Cowboys.

GALLERY: The best of the 2020 PBR World Finals as shot by Chris Elise

And when PBR announced that the 2021 season would start with a southern swing through iconic small-town outdoor rodeo grounds, the first media member to ask for credentials was none other than Chris Elise.

“My first love was the cowboys, so yes, I have come full circle,” he said in a heavy French accent with a good laugh.

Elise initially became intrigued with bull riding after seeing a single picture – a soaring bull and sprawling bucked-off rider, captured from ground level.

“I was really impressed by the picture. Realizing these men were riding bulls, I wanted to see this sport and shoot it,” he said.

And so, in 2017, while in Las Vegas to participate in a documentary pilot for a French TV show and out for a drink, Elise looked up at the TV and saw a cowboy hanging on to a furiously bucking bull.

It was the PBR World Finals.

He took out his phone and bought a ticket for the next night.

“I didn’t know a thing about it, but I go there and fall in love right away,” he said. “PBR knows how to put on a show. It was really fantastic.”

A few months later, in Denver to shoot the Nuggets, he decided to contact PBR for credentials for its event in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Elise explained that he may be an NBA specialist, but he loved cowboys and always wanted to be involved with the PBR.

PBR is eager to introduce the sport to writers and photographers covering other sports. He was immediately credentialed.

“It was my first time in Sioux Falls, my first time shooting PBR, and I loved everything about it,” he said. “I would come to experience how PBR takes care of the media like nobody else.”

With his afro exploding to the heavens, French accent, tattoos, and fingers dangling with conspicuous silver rings, Elise brings a coolness quotient ratcheting up the hipness level of any night’s PBR media contingent.

Working press normally don’t make it into the slate of zany hijinks that goes down between death-defying rides, but he drew the attention of PBR Official Entertainer Flint Rasmussen. The funny back and forth banter between rodeo clown and French photographer by way of LA and Denver went up on the video board.

While the NBA remained Chris’ bread and butter, his PBR immersion would continue. The cast and crew barnstorming the country week to week were eager to learn more about the tall, affable photographer with the Waylon Jennings tattoo on his arm who was increasingly often seen on tour.

An impromptu meeting at T-Mobile Arena during the 2018 World Finals would show an open and intimate sports culture Elise has come to cherish.

“I’m leaving the arena and some guy shouts out, ‘Hey!’ It was Cody Nance,” Elise said. “He’d seen me before and wanted to know who I was. We had a good chat – he wanted to know more about me, so he said he’d see me tomorrow.”

Elise had been in sports for 15 years. Yet this was an experience with an athlete he’d never had.

“In LA, I’d shot the same team for six years, and a player never had said hello once,” Elise said. “This guy had had just gotten on a bull at the most important event in the sport, and he’s genuinely interested in me. The values in this league aren’t marketing BS; it’s totally real.”

The cowboy he enjoys shooting the most, the sport’s biggest star, two-time world champion J.B. Mauney, also befriended Elise.

“J.B.is one of a kind,” Elise says. “His attitude and approach personify the hero that is a cowboy. He never disappoints me. If I could be one cowboy, I would be J.B. Mauney.”

The consummate professional who’s routinely been around stars big as Kobe Bryant and LeBron James has to contain his enthusiasm when in Mauney’s presence.

“I’m going to be 50 years old next year, and I can say that I feel like a kid, and he is my John Wayne,” Elise said

Elise was becoming more fascinated with the sport, but he didn’t expect what would happen next as he covered the rides. Friendships began to blossom.

“I’ve never met real friends in other sports organizations like I have in the PBR,” he said. “Everyone is outward and friendly. Being a fan is easy because PBR is true. The sense of a family is very rich and real. The cowboy values you see PBR pushing; they live by these values. The values and slogans you see the other leagues push, they don’t live by it.”

He lives in Los Angeles with a famous, beautiful and sassy novelist wife, driving his beloved muscle cars – a 1968 Chevelle SS and a 1969 Dodge Super Bee – as well as his modern pickup to cover PBR in Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Texas, Wyoming and South Dakota.

“Those flyover states, that is America,” Elise says. “I tell people all the time that LA and New York are not America.  Some people may think the worst about those other places, but go there and you’ll see honesty and sincerity in the small places all across this country. In the real America, people like you for who you are, for how you treat them. People in America are much easier to talk to than a place like France. I’ve never had a bad experience in all my years of traveling across America.”

When Elise gets to the next city and settles into his position next to the dirt, the lights go down and the “Be Cowboy” video comes up on the video screen, and the dragon-slaying cowboys strut through fire for rider introductions, he gets chills. Every single time.

Elise’s magazine work trained him to be ready for anything that might happen on the field of play.

“I’m a good enough photographer at covering different sports to get some super-good photos and some that are just good,” Elise said. “With PBR, what happens in front of you is spectacular in any second. You could have a ride for only two seconds and still get a spectacular picture.

“When I get on the floor of the NBA, it’s my happy place. I always enjoy that. PBR is the only other sport where I get the same feeling.  Every time I shoot PBR, I get excited. I feel being with my grandfather again, when the western movie started.”

Elise wanted to use his camera instead of a keyboard in America. He thought he’d do better with pictures than words. But he borders on poetic in describing the objects of his lens.

“PBR is this strange dance, this clash, this fight of a man and an animal,” he said. “And that animal is a magnificent beast. There’s a mythology to this bull. They’re beautiful and dangerous. And then you have these cowboys, most of them skinny and tiny, not like football players or UFC fighters.  You put them together, the cowboy and the bull, and the chemistry of their dance is completely unique.”

Along with the westerns airing on three TV channels available in France long before satellite TV and the internet, Elise learned about America by reading about baseball.

“Bull riding is like baseball: two sports that are like a painting – the colors and shades, the confrontations on the field,” he said. “In bull riding, you have the beast and the man. Baseball has the pitcher staring down the batter, which is like how the cowboy looks at the villain in a showdown. It’s a very interesting combination for a photographer.”

As Elise shoots more PBR events – he was the only photographer outside of PBR’s official lensman Andy Watson to shoot the Monster Energy Team Challenge closed-to-fans events at South Point Arena throughout June – he is expanding his canvas.

“Every photographer has his eye and his aesthetic,” he said. “You want a photo of a good ride – the hand is up, he’s in control, everything is looking good. That doesn’t always transfer to good photography.”

Like that first photo that attracted him to PBR, he is in search of the next picture revealing something entirely new.

“Catching the bull looking through the slats of the chute can be a great moment,” Elisa said. “After the big picture of a great ride, the magic is to focus on something else. Maybe when the bull is running in the arena after jerking the rider down on the dirt.”

At every event, his curiosity grows. He’s eager for more rides, new paintings, the next discovery.

“I get more and more interested in the possibilities every time,” Elise said. “It’s 8 seconds, but there’s many interesting things going on in every single one of those seconds.”

As a youngster in France, his first love was cowboys. He’s grown up in America now, in his own boots, photographing cowboy magic.

And amid the wonder of heroes normalized, he’s still feeling all the little boy.