Chasing Dreams in Daytona: My Journey as a Young Photographer in Racing

Brian Cleary
Mar 19
3 min read

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 realized that I really never expected to earn a living as a writer.

The #94 Porsche 935 of Bill Whittington, 7th place, the #30 Porsche 935 of Gianpiero Morertti and Hurley Haywood, 4th place, and the #67 Dodge Challenger of Glenn Bunch, 53rd place, IMSA Finale, Daytona International Speedway, Daytona Beach, Florida, November 1978. (Photo by Brian Cleary/bcpix.com)

In the course of earning my journalism degree and working toward my communications degree I'd taken a couple of photography courses and in my mind I felt that this was something that a could strive toward as a career.

Motorsports Photography on AMAZON

As a lifelong auto racing fan, somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought, "wouldn't it be great if someone would pay me to travel around and take pictures of race cars!".

Champion Spark Plug Radial Sedan race action, IMSA Finale, Daytona International Speedway, Daytona Beach, Florida, November 1978. (Photo by Brian Cleary/bcpix.com)

So these were thoughts that were swirling in my head as I headed to Daytona with Ken Breslauer, my friend since 7th grade, who would later become the long-time communications director and historian for Sebring Raceway, for the season-ending IMSA GT race.

IMSA History on AMAZON

Incidentally, 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 3 days of racing ahead of me.

The #76 Porsche Carrera of Norm Ridgely, 17th place, IMSA Finale, Daytona International Speedway, Daytona Beach, Florida, November 1978. (Photo by Brian Cleary/bcpix.com)

Looking back at this early effort in my career as a young photographer in racing , I see that I apparently as yet had no idea what shutter speeds might be necessary to stop a speeding race car. I had not yet developed my aversion to cluttered backgrounds and I was not particularly precise in my focusing.

Click here for the full gallery from this race

It seems that I was starting to develop an interest in photographing the people behind the race cars and I actually seemed to have a pretty good sense of how to properly expose film. I also see that I had begun to nurture the instinct of most racing photographers to point their camera at any on-track incidents and snap away.

Danny Ongais, R, and a member of his crew, IMSA Finale, Daytona International Speedway, Daytona Beach, Florida, November 1978. (Photo by Brian Cleary/bcpix.com)

So 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 of 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?!" while creating some of the images.

I've been working for years toward a day when I might offer my film archive up as an option for editors, publishers and webmasters to license images for their creations, and 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.