Chasing Dreams in Daytona: My Journey as a Young Photographer in Racing
Updated: Oct 23
It was November of 1978, and I had recently earned an AS degree in Journalism from Palm Beach Junior College in Lake Worth, Florida. I was currently working toward a BS degree in Communications at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. What made me nervous, though, was that even then, I knew that although I enjoyed writing, I really never expected to earn a living as a writer.
Discovering a Passion for Photography
While earning my journalism degree and working toward my communications degree, I took a couple of photography courses. In my mind, I felt that this was something I could strive toward as a career.
As a lifelong auto racing fan, I often thought, "Wouldn't it be great if someone would pay me to travel around and take pictures of race cars?"
These thoughts swirled in my head as I headed to Daytona with Ken Breslauer, my friend since 7th grade. Ken would later become the long-time communications director and historian for Sebring Raceway. We were on our way to the season-ending IMSA GT race.
I had no idea if anyone actually made a living photographing race cars or what path there might be to such a career. I just knew I had a camera, a few rolls of film, and three days of racing ahead of me.
Learning the Ropes
Looking back at this early effort in my career as a young photographer in racing, I see that I had no idea what shutter speeds were necessary to stop a speeding race car. I hadn’t yet developed my aversion to cluttered backgrounds, and I was not particularly precise in my focusing.
However, I was starting to develop an interest in photographing the people behind the race cars. I seemed to have a pretty good sense of how to properly expose film. I had also begun to nurture the instinct of most racing photographers: point the camera at any on-track incidents and snap away.
A Journey Through Time
Now, almost 50 years down the road, and with my fairly successful career in motorsport photography mostly behind me, I'm taking advantage of some downtime to create a digital record of my film efforts from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. It’s actually great fun to go through the old film and digitize the images, all while wondering, "What was I thinking?!" when creating some of the images.
I've been working for years toward a day when I might offer my film archive as an option for editors, publishers, and webmasters to license images for their creations. My archive is now housed at BCPix.com. Of course, such a large undertaking is a work in progress, which may never be completed as new methods of archiving and editing film images arise.
An Invitation to Explore
For now, I invite any student, fan, or user of motorsport photography to drop in and check out the path I took in my life as a racing photographer.
Photo Stories at BCPIX.com
Original photography and firsthand visual history by Brian Cleary.
All images © Brian Cleary. Editorial licensing available.
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What an inspiring journey into motorsport photography! Capturing racing moments takes real passion and patience. A screen moire removal tool can also be useful when refining photos affected by unwanted patterns.