Photography Thoughts .....

especially when aimless and unsystematic. In other words whatever I come up with from time to time. :)

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Some musings of my dads work .....

For awhile now I've been in the process of archiving my late fathers negatives, and within that subject ... his motorcycle racing photography because they are sooooo intriguing to me. Historically some really awesome stuff that I'd like to share a bit of with any racers, fans, friends, relatives and the like. So lets start with this bit of cool trivia from back in the day that I just recently stumbled upon ....



That's my dad Manuel Burton taking a picture of Joel Robert .... back in 1967 at Hopetown (Corriganville) ...... Bob Hopes Movie Ranch. I took these few quick screen shots while watching the 'Ascot And Hopetown Classics' (by Bruce Brown) online the other night. I had been researching some of my dads pictures from that event to identify the racers, and this 'moment' for some reason looked really familiar to me ..... especially this next capture ....


After further study of this screen shot, the riders positioning, the bikes shadow on the ground, certain terrain markings in a larger image of this (rocks location in the dirt, shading etc ... etc....) And the riders left foot (off the peg) pointing at the photographer ....

Well what I am getting at is that it all matched up with this next picture ......


This is the picture my dad captured at that very moment in time 43 years ago through his own cameras lens. The original negative is from black and white film, but I sepia toned the image to give it that nostalgic look here.

Joel Robert (pictured), from Belgium won the 250cc Motocross World Championship 6 times. And he along with fellow Hall of Famer and Countryman Roger DeCoster were making their debut in America at this race, as was Dave Bickers from England. Reigning World Champion Torsten Hallman, of Sweeden, shared the overall Pro 500 CC victory at this event with DeCoster. All legends in Motocross folklore .... and my dad got pictures of them all that day on their Husqvarnas and CZ's.... every one of them .... and then some. American Hall of Famers Eddie Mulder, and Chuck Minert among others also showed up in my dads negatives from Hopetown in 1967. But personally I think the coolest thing I got a kick out of in researching this race .... was in discovering that little clip of my dad taking this picture from so long ago :)

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