Did Somebody Say Sebring?

Finally, some racing to write about. Even better, it's another bucket list race event for me: the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring. I've wanted to photograph a race at Sebring for years, but this year is the first time I've been able to make it happen. Preparations have not been without a couple of hiccups, but those appear to have all been resolved and I'm ready to head south in a week with a friend of mine from Cicero, Indiana.

At LeMans in 2017; got a new helmet this week

I love sports car racing and I've especially come to love the endurance classics which feature multiple classes of cars fighting for position hour upon hour. I have photographed the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona three different times, and I was fortunate to get credentials to shoot the 24 Hours of LeMans in 2017. I plan to go back to LeMans this August on its rescheduled date and hope to have credentials again - assuming travel restrictions between America and France are no longer an issue. Now to have the chance to shoot Sebring and support my friends at French media company MPS Agency - it's one helluva way to start my 2021 racing season.

I expect I will photograph Indycar at Indianapolis for MPSA again as I did in 2018 and 2019 at the Indianapolis Grand Prix and the Indy 500. After that, the rest of this year is wide open for me. Prior to last year, I was pretty well scheduled out with the ARCA Menards Series but that all changed in 2020 when new people came in with a different philosophy about the photography needs of the series. As a result, I had to scramble to shoot any races at all last season. Add the pandemic protocols to that and last year was quite a challenge.

At least this year, progress in overcoming Covid-19 is being made. I will be fully vaccinated in less than two weeks and the mass vaccination programs now underway worldwide give me hope that travel to France in August will be allowed so I can shoot my second LeMans and see many of the friends I  made four years ago. In the meantime, I will enjoy being in Florida for three days of sports car racing this week and savor the experience of shooting another major event on the global motorsports calendar. Maybe I'll see you at Sebring. Say hi and I'll take your picture! Safe travels everyone. Get your shot!

7 Days to the Indy 500

 

7 days to the Indy 500. I took this photo of Brian Herta in 2006 so I am declaring my support for his son Colton to win the 500 next Sunday.

I am incredibly disappointed about not getting media credentials to photograph the race, or even being able to attend, and that disappointment has added a foul edge to my life recently. As a result, I have decided to stop my daily countdown to the 500 after this post. I am going to try and let that disappointment go and support my photographer friends and colleagues who were lucky enough to be chosen to document the event. In addition, I will not be posting any more of my Indy 500 photography, which dates back to 1984, until this year’s 500 is over in order to defer to those who are out at the track working this race. .As the late Dave Martin at AP used to say, “Go make some freaking pictures.”

My close friends and family know why I say this most recent disappointment has tainted my life, but people who only casually know me may not understand why missing the 500 is such a big deal. For context, I would suggest the last 18 months of my life needs to be considered as a backdrop for this most recent punch in the gut. In February 2019, I had lung cancer surgery to remove part of my right lung; I had found out earlier in the year that I also had emphysema. As such, all of this year during the pandemic I have had to live with the knowledge that I am in a high-risk group and consequences could be dire if I were to contract the coronavirus. So try to imagine living under the cloud of constant anxiety every time you go out in public.

At the same time I was dealing with lung cancer recovery last year, my fiance was preparing for her own surgery after finding out she had breast cancer. So we were both trying to recover from major surgeries most ofl last year. Earlier this year, my fiance’s brother died of lung cancer. While he was struggling and ultimately succumbing to his cancer, my 85 year old father was in a rehab facility in Indy for a variety of illnesses. The last time I was able to see him in person was February 29, 2020. Meanwhile, a trip we had planned for France and Greece, and a return trip for me to shoot the 24 Hours of LeMans race, was scuttled and the Indy 500 was postponed because of Covid-19. On May 12th, we learned that my Dad had contracted the virus. The last time I talked with my father was on my birthday, May 31st and then he died June 10th as a result. In that last conversation he told me that 19 people in his facility had died from the virus, so watching him fight the virus on top of his other infirmities added stress all year long.

Within the last two weeks, I learned I would not be able to go to the rescheduled LeMans in September, nor would I get credentials for the 500. My string of consecutive Indy 500 races started in 1976 and was unbroken prior to this year, so missing out has just been the straw that broke the camel’s back. So if I’m curt or snap at you, then know in advance that I’m sorry. Try as I might to control my emotions, they burst through sometimes. If I am more of a jerk than normal, it’s because my nerves are raw. Living in a constant state of anxiety can only be done for so long before something has to give.

Being forced to miss The Race is no joke. Did I also mention that my work as Chief Photographer for the ARCA Menards Series totally evaporated this year as well? Loss after loss after loss these last 18 months has exacted a toll on me that’s left me feeling exhausted, constantly angry and nearly broken spiritually. But I am getting help and am grateful for the people in my life who can prop me up and point me in the direction I need to go. If I hadn’t been able to go out and ride my bicycle this spring and summer - and I’ve been riding the wheels off of my Trek  this year - I hate to think where I would be mentally.

I write this now not to make excuses for popping off but to explain the precarious state of mind I’ve been living with. The sarcastic joke in our family is that the “Shue Grit” combined with the Alley stubbornness is a double whammy.  I was raised to figure things out myself so it’s hard to ask for help. I do not normally show much emotion and I don’t get too close to very many people. Moving from town to town frequently as a Methodist’s minister's kid is partly responsible. My training as an athlete is behind some of that too - you can’t let people know when you’re upset or that you’re nervous; you have to keep your cool to perform when the pressure’s on. If you know me, then you know the things I am passionate about and motorsports photography is at the top of a fairly short list.

Like a bad country music song, when the things you love are stripped away one by one, what is left? I’m still trying to figure that out but I guarantee you I will. Once I do, I’ll be able to play that song in reverse and get back most of what I’ve lost and come out the other side a better and stronger person.

Racing COVID-19

Dawn at Indy in 2019

March 13, 2020 was a Friday when they shut down the school where I teach. At that point, the whole world changed as Indiana went into a lockdown quarantine for the coronavirus COVID-19. Now nearly four months later, my son has lost his maternal grandmother (my ex-wife's mother)  and paternal grandfather (my father) to the coronavirus and the world is still in the grips of the worst pandemic in my lifetime. Social unrest over unfair treatment of minorities and police brutality against African-Americans has only added to the anxiety that many people are feeling over the state of society. Even my hometown of Indianapolis experienced rioting and destruction of property, which is highly unusual for this sleepy Midwestern capitol city.

In the grand scheme of things, the erasure of my 2020 racing schedule is a small matter, but I had big plans for this year which all got scuttled with the global shutdown. The Indycar Grand Prix which normally kicks off the Month of May at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) is being run this weekend with NASCAR's Xfinity Series on the IMS road course but fans will not be allowed and media restrictions are in place so I will be unable to photograph the race. The Indy 500 which is normally the centerpiece of May and spring in Indianapolis has been postponed to August 23rd and fans will be limited to 50% of capacity. Media status for the 500 is unknown but I hope the fact that I will represent a French media company and the defending 500 champion is French will mean something. At least I know I will have seats for the race if all else fails.

By this time last season, I had been to Daytona, had lung cancer surgery, then went to Salem, Talladega, Nashville, Charlotte, Toledo, Pocono, Michigan, Madison, Gateway and Chicagoland to shoot races for the ARCA Menards Series in addition to the Indycar Grand Prix and Indy 500. This year I haven't even taken a single race car photo or been to any tracks because of the coronavirus. I don't know if I will even get any ARCA assignments at all this season after working 19 of 20 races on the ARCA schedule last year. The only good things about that situation are I haven't hardly put any miles on my car this year and I've only put gas in her twice since the lockdown in March.

I should also have been to LeMans, Paris and Marseille in France and Athens, Greece this month if my original plans had held up. I made plane reservations the first weekend in March for that trip which was planned to take more than three weeks in June. Barely a week later the global shutdown hit so I had to cancel those flights. I still hope I can make it to LeMans this Septemeber on its rescheduled date but the remaining trip for my Lilly Endowment project will just have to wait until June 2021. The airlines have been helpful by giving credits for the flights I reserved that are good for up to two years. Even LeMans has announced it will reduce the number of fans allowed at the race and I still have no idea if I will get a photo credential for my second LeMans or not.

Life is full of uncertainty normally anyway, but it feels like it's all piling on now. With my school year set to resume next week, I don't know what to expect so perhaps the best advice I could give to myself  is to just live today. Another good thing about the coronavirus shutdown is I have finally been able to get my manuscript 90% complete of a story I have been working on for most of my adult life but never had time to really focus on before now. I will have much more to announce on that score soon, as I intend to pursue self-publishing of the book. When that will happen, I don't really know, but it will happen come hell or high water. Or Coronavirus pandemic.

Stay tuned race fans. And stay safe - wear a mask.

10 Years After

At Le Mans in 2017

Ten years ago this month, I made the decision to leave a thoroughly unsatisfying municipal job to change careers and go into teaching. It was the best decision of my life. As I get to the end of the racing season each year, it's normal for me to get a little melancholy and reminisce. I've been feeling that way all week since I got back from the last ARCA race at Salem Speedway where Ty Gibbs kicked everyone's butt, so this blog post is intended to fill in some of the blanks in my recent history. Please bear with me. If you read on, then maybe you'll see something you didn't know and I hope maybe even surprise you a little.

I had pieced together a decent career in real estate development and in leadership roles at municipal water and sewer utilities up to that point but I just wasn't happy. I had several of those "is this all there is?" moments in 2009 before I finally pulled the plug on that last utility job and embarked on this new journey. I wanted more time to pursue my passion for photography and I wanted to get involved in education to give back something to the community which had given me so much through the years, so I decided to teach. There's an old adage that goes "Those that can, do; those that can't teach". Frankly that is just bullshit. If it were true then how could you explain all the things I've been able to do since I made that career and life changing decision? It's not just luck or coincidence.

Ty Gibbs dominated and won at Salem last weekend and Grandpa Joe was there

So why write about this now? Well there are only two races left to photograph for my 2019 season and my final tally for the year will be 19 ARCA races and three Indycar races. And that's after having had lung cancer surgery in February which caused me to miss one ARCA race. I have to count my blessings every time I start to prep my gear for a race and I'm already planning for 2020 which I know will include a return trip to the 24 Hours of Le Mans next June. By this time next month, the full ARCA schedule for 2020 will be out so I'll have a much better idea about my racing photography obligations for next season and I couldn't be more excited! My ultimate dream would be to do that kind of photography on a full time basis but I haven't gotten to that point yet where people who need a racing photographer would automatically think of me. I have been working hard to change that!

Long, tall Mr. Photographer

The first two years after I decided to change careers in 2009 were very hard financially. I did not have a full time job and I had just built a new home in 2008. I worked as a substitute teacher in three different school corporations, coached and refereed basketball and soccer, and took every odd job I could get. With all that I still worked about a dozen races in 2010 and started working on really expanding my photo network. A friend helped introduce me to the Associated Press staff over the winter and I got to work my first Daytona 500 in February 2011. This led to also working for AP at Talladega twice and Atlanta for other NASCAR races that year. I also met other photographers and soaked up every little tidbit of expertise any of them would share. I got into Marian University that winter also and started as a full time student in January 2011 while still coaching, refereeing and substitute teaching. I can't begin to describe how many lessons I learned during that time - not just about photography, but about myself and what I wanted to do with my life.

My "signature" Salem photo through the wall - this is Sam Mayer

I started bugging my friends at ARCA about this same time to see if I could get some work with that series too, as I had been working ARCA races at Salem and around the Midwest since 2006. I finally got my teaching license in May 2012 and my first full time job as a teacher started in August 2012. I have been off and running ever since. I had met one of the principals at motorsport.com at Indy that year and I started doing some races for that website in 2013. I did my first ARCA race solo in 2013 also and then things took off as I have done at least 10 ARCA races every year since then. The teaching and officiating continued through 2014 and 2015 as my Mom fought lung cancer so I was lucky enough to have a flexible schedule where I could go help her essentially at the drop of a hat and during school breaks. Mom passed away in July 2015 and I was back at an ARCA race less than two weeks later to grieve and create with my racing family. Through the contacts I had made with motorsport.com, I was lucky enough to go to the 24 Hours of LeMans in 2017 on a most epic trip to France and Italy. The roller coaster ride of racing, travel and photography continues with barely a break through any of it. I couldn't be happier about the good fortune I've had and the great people I've met in this whole career changing process.

It was a gorgeous night at Salem for ARCA short track racing

My one regret is that I wish I had done it sooner. People say "it takes what it takes". You know I'm pretty damn stubborn sometimes (well, most of the time) so it took a bunch of life lessons for me to finally decide to do what I love doing. I tell my adult students all the time not to wait until they are in their 50's like I did. As a kid, all I wanted to do was play pro basketball so when that didn't work out and I came home to Indy in 1979 from the University of Chicago during a severe recession, I had no real career plan and I just took whatever job I could find. Up until 2009, every time I took a job solely because it paid more, I've been unhappy. So don't do what I did. Find your passion. Follow it to the ends of the earth. Don't ever let anyone tell you that you can't do something. And if you fall and fail, get back up and try something different. Go check out some of my photo galleries at this link and see the dream I am chasing.

Ty Gibbs won Salem in dominant fashion

Grandpa "Coach" Joe Gibbs was on hand to help Ty celebrate his Salem win

ARCA was racing at Salem Speedway for the 106th time and a good crowd was on hand

Ed Pompa had the best looking car in a throwback paint scheme

Michael Self is still leading the season points standings with two races to go but only by 5 points

Christian Eckes Tops Nashville Cats; It's Pagenaud at Indy

Christian Eckes won the rain delayed Music City 200

Now that the merry month of May is here, life is about to really get crazy -  as if everything else this year wasn't already nuts! We had an extended stay in Nashville the first weekend of May for the Music City 200 ARCA Menards Series race as the weather Saturday only cooperated long enough to get a practice session in so a Saturday night race became a Sunday afternoon race. None of that mattered to youngster Christian Eckes who got his first win of the season for Venturini Motorsports and really had the field covered for more than half the race. The last fourth of the race, I kept checking his front wheels to see if I could detect glowing brake rotors from overusing the brakes, but I never saw it! I love those kinds of photos on short tracks but Christian had his Toyota on cruise control. He did an impressive little burnout in the tight confines of the narrow front stretch at Fairgrounds Speedway before going to Victory Lane.

Mother Nature hit 2 weekends in a row

Shooting night races is a special challenge so it is always nicer to shoot day races for the simple reason that the light is just better, but the delay to Sunday afternoon meant getting home much later than I had originally planned. I just about set a record with my post-race editing and for sure set another personal best on the drive home to Indy, so it wasn't too late after all and I felt great knowing I had done some good work. So Nashville kicked off May with a bang; now comes the craziness. Over the rest of the month, my schedule is as follows: I worked this past Friday at the Indycar Grand Prix at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and then shot my niece's Sweet 16 party on Saturday instead of the Grand Prix. This coming Friday night, I will be driving to Toledo, Ohio for a two-day ARCA showat one of ARCA's "home" tracks, then the following Wednesday I will drive to Charlotte, North Carolina for an ARCA race the Thursday before Memorial Day weekend, and driving back to Indy on Friday so I can shoot the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, the day before Memorial Day. The Indy winner's photo shoot is on Memorial Day morning then the following Thursday, I drive to Pocono for another ARCA race, which in this case is on my birthday May 31st. Oh and I forgot to mention working Indy 500 practice each weekday afternoon this week when I will race from my school in Noblesville to IMS after work each day to photograph Happy Hour. I figured out that for the month of May as a whole, I am either traveling to or at a racetrack 17 days. Never mind the fact that I still have to manage my teaching job and close out the school year while all of the above is going on!

Team Penske's Simon Pagenaud prevailed in the Indycar Grand Prix

Trust me, I am not complaining, especially since I am just now 12 weeks past my lung cancer surgery. I feel like I've been given a new lease on life and I'm so grateful for the opportunity to shoot the Indy 500 again for my friends in France at MPS Agency in addition to my ARCA series work. The ARCA race at Nashville was another perfect segue for my recovery since it's only a half-mile track and it's not quite a five hour drive from home, neither of which is too daunting. And lately when I am at a racetrack, I start to feel like a spinner at a Grateful Dead show as the joy wells up inside me while doing what I love. I hope the people I work with can see that and I really hope it comes through in my photos. If any of you out there have an opinion on that, then I'd love to hear it.

I like road racing but the 500 is a special race

I was not able to work the Grand Prix on Saturday and it's the first one I've missed since they started this event at IMS a few years ago. The race has become a Penske playground and the rain near the end added some drama, but I was not disappointed to miss it since I got to photograph my niece's Sweet 16 party. She asked me months ago to be her photographer before she even had a date for the party and I was not about to back out after the year she's had. It was so much fun seeing her enter womanhood ceremoniously and I was thrilled to be able to document the event for her. I know she will remember it for a lifetime and for me, it was a chance to put family over racing in the month of May which has rarely happened for me. I would make the same decision in a heartbeat. But please don't schedule anything over the Indy 500 - I can't imagine missing that! Be forewarned!

This week they start going the "correct" way on the track

So now practice for the 500 begins and I will be hustling out there as much as possible after work this week and then working late to upload photos to the MPS Agency website. Friday evening I travel to Toledo, Ohio to work that ARCA Menards Series race for the first time and will be there through Sunday evening. I am looking forward to another short track race with my ARCA friends and the experience of working a new racetrack is always fun as well. At IMS last Friday I logged nearly 19,000 steps walking around the Indy road course so that exercise helps with my physical recovery and increases my stamina. I am going to need it for the next several weeks as I will be working races somewhere every week through the end of June. This promises to be the busiest stretch of my career as a motorsports photographer and I can't wait to get into it. Not only that, I still have my Hoosier Cemeteries photo book to complete in June to wrap up my Indiana Arts Commission grant so there's no rest for the weary. Or is that no rest for the wicked? Either way, I am going to have some creative fun and hope you find me at a racetrack down the road to tell me how I'm doing. Thanks for reading! Until next time, here's a few more photos from Nashville and the Indycar GP.

The Nashville ARCA winner gets a guitar trophy every year which has become quite coveted

Rookie Felix Rosenqvist put his Ganassi machine on the pole for the Indycar Grand Prix

ARCA points leader Michael Self's day was ruined by another driver's mistake

Will Power was the odds-on favorite to win another GP but couldn't get it done this time.

The old Petty STP colors were out in full force at Nashville with the King's grandson Thad Moffitt at the wheel

The Big C and Me

Bring it on!

They say I have lung cancer.

But I'm grateful. How can that be? Those of you who read my blog on a regular basis know it's mainly about my journey as a photographer who specializes in motorsports. On January 4, 2019 that journey took on a whole new meaning for me when the results of a PET scan showed I had a cancerous spot in my right lung. I have been scanned from head to toe and those tests show no other signs of cancer anywhere else in my body. I met with a  thoracic surgeon last Wednesday and surgery has been scheduled for February 19th to remove the cancer.

So how can I be grateful they found cancer? I smoked for 40 years but at the end of this month I will be smoke free for 3 years, so I was hoping for good news from the earlier tests but I wasn't surprised to hear the news from the PET scan. After all, my Mom died of complications from lung cancer in July 2015 so the family history and my personal history intersected about where I feared. The good news is that it is a small spot and my doctor says that no further treatment will be required aside from regular scans in the future to see if it recurs or shows up somewhere else in my body. So there's gratitude for early detection.

I'm also grateful because my employer, Goodwill Education Initiatives, encourages and gives incentives for employees to get annual physicals. My primary care physician had urged me to get a $49 heart scan because of my and my Mom's histories of smoking even though I have no symptoms of any kind. I got the heart scan November 2nd last year and followed that up with a CT scan December 7th. Without that series of scans which culminated with the PET scan and a brain MRI January 11th, I seriously doubt that the cancer would have been caught until it was much further along. The surgeon described the spot as the "size of a pea" and it is only in Stage 1. There's still a small chance that a biopsy of the tissue that will be taken during surgery might not actually be cancerous, so I will pray for that outcome but I am not betting on it.

Some funny things have happened along the way that I am also grateful for. During the January 4th meeting with the pulmonologist about the PET scan results, he said he was surprised that there was virtually no history in my medical records for him to review. I have been an athlete my whole life and lead a very physically active lifestyle so we got a good laugh out of his observation. I used to think my level of  physical activity would "blow out" my lungs and counteract the other aspects of my lifestyle but at 61, it appears that fallacy has all caught up with me. Another humorous moment came with the surgeon who asked me if I could walk up two flights of stairs. I laughed at her and said I routinely walk 20,000 steps a day doing my motorsports photography in 90 degree heat carrying 25 pounds of camera gear. She responded "he laughed at me!" so I am grateful for my overall health.

I am also grateful that I get the chance to write about my experiences and have a platform to share what I am going through. I've had broken bones and gotten stitches a few times throughout my life but have been fortunate that I've never had to undergo any kind of surgery until now. Considering all the things I've put my body through, that in itself is amazing! Now I know that lots of people have written about their experiences with cancer so my blog reports may not be anything earth shattering: it's just my story and maybe someone else will read something they can connect with.

A week before I had my PET scan and found out I had cancer, I had the opportunity to photograph the Music City Bowl game between Purdue and Auburn in Nashville, Tennessee. Before the game, I got to see a young man, former Purdue student Tyler Trent, who had almost single-handedly united the Boilermakers during his own very public fight against his cancer. Since my diagnosis, I have thought to myself that if that young man can keep his faith and fight to live at the age of 20 when he had barely begun to live, then I have no reason to mope around or feel sorry for myself. Less than a week after I photographed Tyler at the game, he passed away, so I consider myself lucky to have been in his presence that day which turned out to be so close to the end of his fight. Godspeed. #TylerStrong Boiler Up Hammer Down

So how do I feel about my diagnosis? Initially I felt alternately sad and angry, in nearly equal measure, but today I am grateful and happy things are working out the way they are. I have so much to do in my life and no one is issuing any proclamations about how much time I have left so I plan to carry on as if this surgery will take care of the problem once and for all. The reality of cancer is rarely so simple and none of us gets out of here alive anyway, so I am going to live my life "as if" I have another 20 or 30 years ahead of me and do all the things I've dreamt of doing. We're not even guaranteed tomorrow and I don't want to waste a minute.

Whatever you do, don't feel sorry for me. I appreciate people asking how I am doing and if there's anything they can do, but I don't want to be treated like I have the scarlet letter "C" emblazoned on my forehead. Let's just live and love with all our might and be grateful for whatever time we have together. There's no time like the present - it's a gift after all. And I still have a lot of life to live. Next up for me on this journey is shooting a Purdue men's basketball game February 3rd and then the following week I fly to Florida to shoot the ARCA race event at Daytona, so you'll be hearing from me again soon. To paraphrase the late Sid Collins, "stay tuned for the greatest spectacle in living." And thanks for reading; see you soon!

Special Photo Projects Ahead: Get Involved!

History in stones

I haven't worked a race since the Indy 500 at the end of May but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy with my cameras. My fiance and I spent a week in Charleston, South Carolina on vacation the third week of June so I had the opportunity to add to my travel photography portfolio. While we were in Charleston, I was notified that a grant I had applied for through the Indiana Arts Commission had been approved. I was surprised but happy to get that notification as I really didn't expect to be approved given the review committee comments I had heard a couple months ago. With that grant approval, I now have a longer term photo project to complete which I am quite excited about.

If you have an interest in Indiana cemeteries or genealogy, then perhaps you will be interested in my project as well. If you would like to be kept apprised of my progress, or you know of any especially interesting cemeteries that I should check, then please email me here or leave a comment on this blog or any of my social media accounts such as Twitter. I am especially interested in photographing pioneer cemeteries or older cemeteries which have been virtually abandoned, or surrounded by modern development. I have been researching locations on the internet and have several in mind around central Indiana already. My goal is to produce a photo book for public distribution at the end of my project and I'm really excited about the challenge this project entails. I plan to experiment with lighting as well as shoot lots of black and white images, so this project is outside my normal comfort zone photographically.

Older cemeteries often contain hidden gems I hope to find and photograph

As fate would have it, we got the chance in Charleston to visit some very old churches in the "Holy City" and each one seemed to have its own little cemetery. At the time, I hadn't found out about the grant award yet but I was already thinking about the project so I made sure to take a few photos at each graveyard. I didn't know why Charleston was called the Holy City before this trip but I overheard a horse drawn carriage driver tell his passengers that the name was a result of the numerous churches in the historic old city. When we were in Europe last summer, churches were regular locations for us to visit so checking them out in Charleston seemed natural. I don't consider myself a religious person but I often feel a spiritual presence in these old places of worship so that is a big reason I find myself drawn to these places. Is it any wonder I have devised a photo project with a spiritual element in visiting old Indiana cemeteries?

For next year, I have an even bigger photo project in mind that will also involve churches so stay tuned for more on that over the summer! Next weekend I am back to racing with the ARCA series at Iowa Speedway where we are paired with Indycar so I am looking forward to getting back to work!

The interior of St. Michael's Church in Charleston