More Horses

These are a couple more photos from the piece on Maryland horse racing. You can actually read the whole article here. 

This is Tom Bowman a vet and horse breeder who lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore. He was a beautiful little horse farm out in Chestertown. I drove out to shoot with him and a cold overcast day which turned out to be fairly appropriate considering the article basically turned into a tale of the slow demise of horse racing. 

Tom, though was extremely nice and answered all the horse breeding questions I peppered him with. The colt in the photo I believe was only about four days old...but don't quote me on that. As you can see in the photo that accompanies the article the colt didn't at all fit even the smallest harness they had. 

Seeing a horse farm like Tom's really makes you hope that we really don't turn all of America into suburbia. There needs to be places with picket fences, rolling green hills, dirt roads and creeks cutting little veins into it all. You lose track of time a little out there. Lost time is far too hard to find as it is. 

I'm a joker, I'm a smoker

As a part of the series I shot on the Maryland horse racing industry I shot Mike. Mike was a better. NOT a gambler as he told me. He was playing odds, and playing odds is not gambling. 

   You couldn't have come up with a better character for the shot though. He wore a leather jacket that had a big rip in it and a leather hat that he wore turned back with a tear on the left side. His daily intake of tobacco included both dip and cigs. He walked around with a curled up notebook that he jotted down notes on the bets he made. 

   Mike was studying to be a nurse, but he also did standup (although I don't remember him saying a thing that made me laugh), he was working on some screenplays and he seemed to have a couple other odd jobs that were getting him by. He fit right in with the crowd at the Laurel track that included the young, the old, the working class, the business class, the retired and the tired. If you ever want to see a strange slice of life hit up a horse track on a weekday. 

   Throughout the entire shoot Mike talked. He talked about the industry going down the drain. He talked about his standup. He talked. He explained odds and betting to me, although I admit I left with only a hazy understanding of how it goes down. He almost had me convinced that it was more skill than luck as he showed how he studies up on who the jockeys and breeders are. He tracks how different horses do on different surfaces and distances. I was nearly convinced...then he placed a bet who would come in first, second and third in three consecutive races. No way that is anything but luck! 

   We shot these images in the huge grandstand area that sits empty nearly all the time. Partly because of how small the crowds are and partly because what crowds are there mainly watch from inside on TVs. These shots were some of the few moments that I caught Mike not talking. The horizontal one remains one of my favorite shots. I grabbed the betting slips out of the trash. Turns out there are people called stoopers who's whole thing is looking through trash cans trying to find winning slips that people have accidentally thrown out. 

Mario Pino

One of the most interesting jobs I have got to do since moving to Baltimore was shooting portraits of people involved in the Maryland horse racing industry. In recent years the industry has struggled and then the owner of Pimlico, the crown jewel or Maryland racing filed for chapter 11. 

I shot a breeder, trainer, assistant trainer, gambler, activist and a jockey. These are some photos of the jockey Mario Pino. Mario came in second in the Kentucky Derby in 2007 riding Hard Spun. Turns out he's pretty legendary in the area as a jokey. Amazingly too he turns 50 next year! 

My knowledge of horse racing before this was nonexistent so it was so interesting to get such an intimate and wide ranging peak into the sport of kings. And you quickly see why it is the sport of kings and why it probably struggles now financially. I was told it can cost in the area of 40 grand a year to train a horse. So of course if you have 10 or more horses that adds up fast! 

Mario turned out to be very nice. We took these shots a little before and after his races. The original idea was to have a horse in the shot but amazingly this turned out to be nearly impossible. Due to track edict and the fact that race horses apparently basically will not stand still for much time we ended up shooting these instead which I thought came out wonderfully.