I was the very junior member of a team photographing the 48th International Six Days Trial (ISDT ’73) for Chilton Publishing’s book The Olympics of Motorcycling – ISDT ’73. During the event, most of my time was spent driving other photographers from place to place. I did get a few opportunities to shoot some of the action. However, I was extremely disappointed that none of my photos made it into the book. When I received my film back a couple of months after publication, I just stuck everything in my files and did not look at it again for — 50 years.

It was a revelation to realize when I finally stared digitalizing the images that they were not that bad, and certainly not that bad for a 21-year-old who had never photographed this type of event before.

I made some real mistakes when I brought mostly slow-speed film, Kodak Plus-x (ASA125) for black-and-white, and Kodachrome 25 (ASA25) and Fujifilm 100 (ASA100) for color. (The Kodachrome slides are still lovely; the Fujifilm is fading away to a nasty brown.) I did not realize that much of the action would take place in the woods and rain. I also was not completely familiar with the two Nikon F cameras and lenses I had rented to photograph the event. Oh, and I did not have through the lens metering, just a handheld light meter. I did a lot of fumbling and felt bad when the event was over and even worse when I had only a credit in the book — “For Chilton Book Company: … Martin Kane, Editor Professional Automotive Books.” (At Chilton I worked on repair manuals and made photographs of repair procedures. Chilton published motorcycle repair manuals in addition to manuals for cars and trucks.)

Fifty years on, at the other end of a long career, it was rewarding to finally feel better about what I thought was a massive failure and missed opportunity. Digital photography makes it so easy to make images today, it’s good to remember that once upon a time you had to know something — even if you didn’t think you did.