Speed & Spray, the book, told the story of the 1974 Stock Outboard Nationals, held at Eastwood Lake in Hydroglobe Park. It was the start of a resurgence of racing in the stock outboard class (and which saw 1,000 entries the following year at the same venue.)
Between Reid and me, over the week that the event was held, we shot more than 100 rolls of film, though not all rolls were completely exposed to the end as we sometimes needed to change a roll to prepare for a next heat, rather than shoot the last 10 exposures and change a roll in the middle of a heat.
We used somewhere around 120 images in the book, but shot nearly 3,000. There were many good images which were left out simply because we didn’t have space or they didn’t quite fit the story we were telling.
This is generally the lot in life of photojournalist. I can tell you, and you will see as we are able to add more images to the site, that shooting, for example at Wakefield, Michigan for Stock Nationals those many years, that I would make well over 2,000 images but only 20, at the most would be printed.
While the impetus for this site are the images from the Speed & Spray book, I’ll be adding other images from other facets of boat racing as time and money allow. Stay tuned and check back every so often.
Enjoy!
-Rusty Rae, for Reid Blackburn