monticello raceway
in the fall of 1993, i got to go to the eddie adams workshop. i was only 20.
it was so amazing to be able to experience it all, just because someone somewhere thought the page of 20 slides i submitted were interesting. i remember thinking how cool it was that just 20 pictures i took got me to experience it all. if you don’t know what it is, go find out, or better yet, try to go…..
my team leader was bill frakes, sports illu photographer, my photo editor was tom kennedy, then director of photo at the geographic. a few times during the weekend, i got to talk one on one with the best in the business in the usual meetings and a few times outside of these…. i had never been so terrified and full of hope for my photography at the same time before or even since, i wish i could start it all over. i was humiliated beyond belief and full of pride, the 2 day picture struggle meant something, and to me, that’s all that mattered in the end, i was different then i was just 4 days earlier.
our assignment, the monticello raceway. we got dropped off for a few hours on two days to make some images and go back to all the lectures in between. somehow, i didn’t know it at the time, but we got judged on our images made those days, the award was an assignment for a major magazine. i was one of the last ones called, i won an assignment for a magazine that would later never assign it. now i ended up working for this magazine for a few years anyway many years later, after earning my way in the hard way.
now by chance, 14 years later, i was at the raceway again.
as usual, me being me, i put the select images from the workshop in a special place, now i cannot find that special place after an hour of looking, but here is a fast scan of an old cibachrome print, remember those? anyway, here’s one i made and one bill frakes shot of me that weekend…. i miss who i was so much.
