FT.com

When was it you discovered you had the talent and skills to become a top notch racing photographer?

DM

Of course I'd fooled around with cameras all my life. My dad Walt sold his track roadster and bought cameras to earn a living so they could afford to raise me. He had a studio and did portraits for a while, but he soon discovered that taking pictures at the races was more fun and paid just about as well, so he dumped the studio and just shot local flat track and sprint car (track roadsters back then) racing. I've been around tracks literally since i was two weeks old. I helped with the concession stand, emptied the trash, sold programs, and a bunch of other things at Gardena Stadium on Western Avenue and 183rd. So I was always around it, and then I would help my dad "soup" and dry the pictures in the darkroom, and learned the ins-and outs of the darkroom from years of that. I shot my first flat track in 1966, even though I wasn't legally old enough to get into the pits, but when I turned 18 and was old enough to be legal, I began shooting more seriously, now officially being the "other end guy", who shot the action at the opposite end of the track from my dad.

On my very first day of officially shooting to make money, I shot the picture that they used on cover of the next week's program. That was a big chest-thumper! This was in 1968. By 1970, I was recognized enough that Motorcycle Weekly (Cycle News's competition and much more flat track-oriented) did a story about me and featured several of my pictures. About that time, I got to thinkin' that, hell, I can ride better than half of these guys, so I applied for a Competition Card (I think Chuck Palmgren or Neil Keen did my "medical") and got out there weekly against guys like Kenny Roberts, Gary Scott, Al Baker, Ron Moore, and a bunch of other fast guys. Obviously, I picked the wrong year to get a Novice License. But I did what I thought I could, and I ran mid-pack (as good as half of 'em) every week. I made a shady deal with the AMA officials that I would take the outside back-row starting spot (technically the worst starting position) every week if they would put me in the first heat race, so that if I didn't do any good, I could pack it in and start shooting pictures. I would even ride right down to the corner where I had left my camera box and shoot in my leathers until intermission. After a year of that (my claim to fame is falling in the same corner four weeks in a row), I rode maybe a dozen races in 1971, but started shooting to more out-of-state nationals, too. OK, after all that drivel, here's the short answer to your question: 1968, when that first program cover came out (it was a picture of the whole group of riders going into turn one at the Ascot 100-lap TT, with two riders crashing, right in the middle of the picture where I was lucky enough to have no other bikes. Luck is a lot of this business, just like in racing , but to be really good, you have to pay attention, just as much or more than the racers. You have to walk the track and look for slick spots of soft spots or holes where somebody might accidentally get spectacularly sideways for just an instant, but you're there because you knew to be there. Pay attention to everything. Listen to what the racers are talking about - after a while, you know that if somebody says he's gonna cut his tire this way, you know he's going for the cushion, and if he shortens his forks and puts on a smaller sprocket, he's gonna try and run the bottom. Look through here and push this button, and pay attention to everything. It's just as easy to push the button at the right time as it is to push it at the wrong time. Just PAY ATTENTION. I've had certain guys want a picture every week taken in the same exact place, and showing them going away from me, so they can see what the tach was reading from week to week., or how much the shocks were compressed.