SPORTS ILLUSTRATED FUNNY STORY

©JoAnne Kalish

A highlight of my career. Funny story...
I was photographing the Long Beach Grand Prix Which was the first street race of the season. I was just one, of the many photographers there. One of the keys to photographing these events is to scout out your positions during qualifications and make sure you get to a position where you can shoot the start of the race, very early, and ahead of the other shooters.

At the start of the race, maybe into the second lap, there was a loud noise and the screeching of brakes and smoke. I quickly panned following the action, around the turn, with my new Nikon motor driven camera. I had chose a corner position to shoot the start of the race, so I was able to follow through, as James Hunt flipped up into the air and onto one tire as he went over Patrick Depailler's car with Mario Andretti barely missing getting caught up in this shunt. After the race the other photographers were talking about what happened and I, matter of factly said, "I got the whole thing on film." At the time I just assumed everybody did and was not trying to brag but stating a fact. The other photographers (all male) just stared at me and kind of met each other's eyes. Later that day we went to the lab to check and pick up our film. Again this is really funny, when I opened the first box of film, there was the whole shunt series! The guys just could not believe this when I showed it to them! You had to see their faces! Someone suggested I give SPORTS ILLUSTRATED a call and let them know I had this on film & ask if they needed it. Sure enough, a messenger came to pick up my film and it was flown back to New York for that week's issue. They ran it once again, in SPORTS ILLUSTRATED YEAR IN PICTURES and I became a freelance shooter for the Magazine working mostly with Director of Photography, at the time, Gerry Cooke. I was one of the first women shooters for the Magazine.
JoAnne Kalish