Saturday 27th Jul, 2024
It’s funny how you can shoot thousands of images over the course of a day/month/year, but when you capture one that resonates with you you’ll never forget it. This image comes with a story from Europe last year at the 2015 MXoN. I felt an immense amount of pressure heading over to document the MXoN, but also felt the same amount excited as I did nervous. I was still sort of the “new guy” here at TransWorld Motocross (still sort of am – today marks one year), and although I had plenty of experience and confidence in my craft I hadn’t ever covered such a big event like this solo for a major publication like this. No biggie, that’s why we call ourselves professional photographers right? Well, maybe not.
Working late into the night on the first day of qualifying racing (Friday) I had set my camera on the bed at my hotel and immediately started working on the content to post. I never even got into a comfortable position and about an hour later, super tired and worn down, bumped the camera off the low European style bed onto the hard floor. Doh! No worries, I’ve done dumb sh*t like this before, should be all good – right? Nope! Went to the race the next day only to find the camera wouldn’t focus due to a bent body mount. Main camera down, and the first real race of the event hadn’t even happened yet! I always have two bodies with me, so there I was early Saturday AM using my backup Nikon and very, very disappointed in myself for the dumb mistake. Flash forward a few hours later and my now Italian buddy/photographer extraordinaire Massimo Zanzani was lending me a No. 0 screwdriver to now tighten the completely loose lens mount of my only remaining working body! A few minutes and a bunch of thanks later, it was all fixed up. I was hoping my bad luck (most of which I caused) was now over, and thankfully it was!
The remainder of the weekend was filled with some of the most memorable moments I’ve ever been lucky enough to photograph, both on and off the track. I got my job done as I thankfully somehow always do, and the January 2016 issue of TransWorld Motocross had the MXoN feature which I was super proud of that summarized it all up with words and photos. It’s tough to describe the crowd in Ernée without realizing you just have to hear it to understand, and no words will do it justice. I was convinced I needed to capture the essence of an event so massive through my photos and I sure hope I did. This particular image stands out in my mind when I think of the massive crowd, and I can’t begin to imagine what it’s like for a guy like Justin Barcia to leap downhill while visually faced with that sea of foreign fans. With the 4th of July coming up, I thought this was fitting for a pretty damn patriotic photo! The moral of this whole story? Keep on keepin’ on and you’ll always get the job done – at least I hope that’s true!