I was going through old photos today, trying to think of something to write about for this week’s Behind the Lens, and then it hit me – I should write about my first published photo. My “origin story”, so to speak. For this one, we’re going back to 2005 and a particularly muddy edition of the Mission National.
I guess, to go right back to the beginning of my photography story, I need to start at the beginning. I’ve always loved to take photos, even from a young age. I always had a camera with me and took pictures of everything. In my teenage years, I got a fully manual Minolta SLR and a few lenses that were passed down from my dad, and I’d take that with me wherever I went. Living in BC, I mainly shot landscapes, but I’d take photos of anything. I also enjoyed riding dirt bikes and growing up in Mission, I had access to a track that held Nationals. In the early 2000s, I upgraded from the Minolta to a Nikon SLR and finally had autofocus, so I’d go to the Mission National and the Washougal AMA National once a year and shoot moto. I’d scan some of my favourite shots and post them on the message boards of the time (mototalk, mxnorth and mxforum) and back in those early days of the internet, they were a real community, and many friendships were made through them.
As my skills progressed, I started to get a couple of landscape shots published in a local calendar, and I started realizing that photography was maybe something I wanted to pursue as a career. Digital was beginning to take over and I knew that if I wanted to take things any further, I’d need to invest in a digital camera. At the same time, I was a huge Racer X Illustrated fan, and a Canadian version, RacerXCanada, had just launched. I knew it was improbable, but I dreamed of one day getting a photo published in RXC.
I really didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I made the decision that if I wanted to pursue photography, I’d need to go all in, and made the tough decision to sell my YZ250 to buy a digital camera and a new lens. Looking back now, it seems crazy, and I’ve never owned my own dirt bike since, but it paved the way for everything I’ve done in the past 17 years.
I started going to more local races and sharing my shots online and building up a bit of a name locally. Still, I’m an intensely shy person, so the thought of reaching out to a magazine seemed insane to me. I kept doing my own thing and posting stuff, and at some point, I had posted a photo of myself, I can’t even remember why, which ended up being quite fortunate.
My hometown 2005 Mission National rolled into town and I was excited to shoot our biggest race of the year. Back in those days, we had the Saturday qualifiers, which as a photographer, I always enjoyed – it gave a good chance to shoot some shots and see what worked before the motos the next day. I saw another photographer with some nice pro gear walking by, and said a quick “hi”, in passing and he stopped, turned around, and said, “Are you jkliss?” (my online handle at the time. He was Jason Griffiths, the editor of RacerXCanada and he mentioned that he’d seen my photos online and really liked them. He introduced me to Allison Kennedy, and just like that, I met two of the three biggest influences in my photography career.
Jason told me to submit some photos from the race and they’d check them out. I still didn’t think it would go anywhere but what the hell, I thought I’d give it a shot. After great weather on Saturday, Sunday dawned wet and rainy, and we were treated to some extremely muddy motos. I sent in my photos after the race and didn’t expect to hear anything back, but got an email from Jason soon after, telling me not to send them to anyone else and they were definitely going to use them. I couldn’t believe it, my dream was coming true, and in the September 2005 issue of RacerXCanada, I got my first published image, an opening spread for the story on the Mission National.
Now, knowing that they were into using my images, it spurred me on, and I made the drive to Nanaimo the next weekend for the race, then another half-baked drive to Calgary the following week that’s a story in itself. Then, my first flight to Ontario, for the TransCan. Jason, Allison and the rest of the RacerXCanada crew believed in me and I kept pushing forward, figuring out a way to get to the next race, and here we are, a hard to believe seventeen years later. There’s been plenty of ups and downs along the way, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything, and I owe it all to a chance encounter in 2005 at my hometown race.