racing to publication

Saturday May 4th is not only Star Wars Day, and an early May the Fourth Be With You to all my geek friends but it is also the fastest two minutes in sports. For those of you who do not follow the sports of kings, on Saturday the 139th running of the Kentucky Derby will take place at the most famous twin white spires in the country, Churchill Downs.

Each year starting in January my close friend Jasen and I start to take special note of all the new horses on the racing circuit hoping to find that one special horse who will be immortalized with a blanket of roses and who’s name will be mentioned in the same sentence as Secretariat, Seattle Slew, Silver Charm and more recently the likes of Big Brown and Smarty Jones.

While reading up on this year’s 3 year old candidates that will enter the starting gate on Saturday in hopes of claiming a place in racing history I got to thinking about all the races I have seen and more specifically all the horse racing images that I have shot and I began to recall one specific day.

Hopping into Mr. Peabody’s WABAC (pronounced "wayback") machine we turn back the hands of time once again to the year 2002, not long after I shot my basketball game that produced my shot of Britton Johnsen throwing down a dunk. It was in the early part of winter that I had set out for my first trip to Alaska to visit my best friend and meet his soon to be wife for the first time. On my way to the Los Angeles International Airport my friend Jasen and I took advantage of the trip to the greater Los Angeles area and made a side trip to Santa Anita to take in a day of horse racing before heading over to the airport to drop me off for my evening flight.

While we were enjoying a day at the historic Santa Anita race track, where the famous Seabiscuit rose to prominence in the late 1930’s I pulled out my camera and popped in a roll of Kodak’s black and white T-Max 400 film and set out to work on my school project.

The racing card did not have any special races or big name horses set to take a run at the prize money that day however, that really did not matter to me. I was armed with my new zoom lens, a new sense of confidence from my basketball game a few weeks earlier, a better understanding of my camera, and several rolls of film that I knew were going to give me something amazing.

As the day wore on I looked down at the display on my camera and noted that I had shot less then half a roll of film and what I had shot had been dedicated to safe shots consisting of horses walking around the paddock area with their trainers prior to their race, and in retrospect the images from that first half of the roll were really nothing more then just standard snap shots. Needing to finish the full 36 frames before I could pop in my second roll I noticed that there were only 3 races left for the day and I had not even started to work on the assignment for my beginning black and white photography class. To make matters worse one of the final races on the day was a turf course race, which is on the grass for you non race aficionados and that track was on the inside where the rail from the outer dirt course would obstruct my view of the horses, so essentially I was down to just two races for the day in which to work on my project.

With the turf race out of the question as a race that could contribute to my class assignment, which at that time was to work on panning the camera. Panning is a technique that basically makes the background turn to steaks while the subject remains in focus. The second project was to work on image blur, and yes before you ask sometimes photographers do intentionally take photographs that have blur in them. Most of the time when that happens though the photographer is trying to showcase something specific with the blur such as motion. But like Bob Ross the painter on PBS says, sometimes photographers make “happy accidents”, and did not intentionally want to blur an image but did, and it turns out to be an amazing image anyway.

As the turf race had concluded I had taken up position on the fence closest to the final turn on the dirt track so I could catch the horses in their final push for the lead in hopes of winning the race, when this beautiful dark brown thoroughbred horse was walked in front of me. His coat glistened from his efforts to win, his ears were pricked straight up, and a white shadow roll was the only blemish in his flawless color. His eyes were locked straight ahead as he slowly strode by me with a sense of confidence and I thought what a great image this will make as I snapped the shutter.

Having what I felt was a nice image reflecting the majestic nature of a race horse I still had not managed to snap a single frame that would satisfy my professor and my assignment. The second to last race of the day had finished and I knew I was still without what I needed. So it was down to the final race of the day to give me something to work with or I would be forced to work on this assignment once I reached Alaska.

The gate bell sounded and the horses broke from the gate on the one mile trip around the dirt track. I was still in my same position on the fence waiting for the horses to exit the final turn and start their kick for the finish line. As the horses came into the turn I could see through the view finder the first pack of horses was not going to give me an opportunity to let the auto focus track a horse and produce a high quality panning shot. Just as the first pack of horses passed me the next pack held two horses locked in a duel for what would probably be at best a fourth place finish in that race. I quickly adjusted my focal length on my lens and started to track the horses, moving my camera with them trying to match their speed in hopes of getting that panning shot and turning my background in nothing but crisp streaks that would serve as an accent to the two horses trying to best each other. The horses approached and I locked my focus on the saddle cloth and pushed the button. When the shutter released the horses had left my view finder and headed towards the finish line.

At that point in time I had no idea what had been captured on that half of roll of film. I knew the first half was nothing that would complete my assignment and I knew the last half would remain a complete mystery for the next week as I spent time in Alaska.

Once I returned home and processed my film and printed my contact sheet I took to the light table and started to poor over what I had shot. I took several minutes to examine each tiny frame on the sheet looking for something to turn in. Finally I settled on the image of the two horses from the last race. It looked to be my best shot and the closest to completing the panning shot assignment however, I did not have anything that would work for the blurring assignment.

I headed back to the darkroom and made my print. I exposed the paper and took the print to the developer and started to rock the tray of solution gently over the paper. As the image started to appear I could see that not only had I gotten my panning assignment done I had also managed to get just enough blur in the legs of the horses to take care of both assignments in one photograph.

At class that night we all presented our images and discussed each one. By the end of the evening my image had been chosen as the best image of the evening. A few weeks later I noticed a flyer calling for submissions into the nation wide Best of College Photography competition and if you were chosen your work would be published in a book of the same title. I looked over the rules and decided that the worst that could happen would be a rejection of my work, life would move on and I would know that I was not yet good enough for publication.

I decided that my entry would be from the panning assignment that I had just completed. It had received the best critique to date that I had gotten from my professor, and my peers also seemed to think it was a strong image so I filled out the paperwork, enclosed my print, and sent it off. Several weeks later I received a large envelope in the mail from an address that I did not recognize. As I ripped the envelope open and looked inside I could see that my image had been returned to me. A feeling of rejection had started wash over me, I honestly did not think I would make the cut and I was still just a beginner so the rejection was to be expected. Once I removed the image from the packaging I saw that there was a letter paper clipped to the image. Quickly I read the letter to find that it was not a rejection letter but a letter that was congratulating me for being selected to be published in that years book. I was floored and my heart raced, I had just started out in photography, and someone had seen enough talent in one of my images to publish it, and to this day I can still remember the joy I had when I opened up that book, and found my image bound and printed.

Two horses duel in the stretch at Santa Anita in 2002.