Behind the Lens

New Jersey native Bill Denver is today's subject in TDN's rotating series profiling racetrack photographers. We ask about memorable horses, races, and people they've viewed through the lens, and also talk about how the craft of equine imagery has evolved. Denver, 60, is the founder of Equi-Photo, which currently shoots the races and provides winner's circle photographs at Monmouth Park, the Meadowlands Thoroughbred meet, Parx, and Penn National. Separate from his work at East Coast tracks, Denver has previously freelanced for college athletic departments and numerous newspapers, including the New...

This is the fourth installment in a series highlighting racetrack photographers. Around 1960, a funeral director decided he'd had enough of the cold Chicago winters, so he uprooted his family to Phoenix to ply his trade in a warmer clime. Upon arrival, Jack Coady, Sr. learned his Illinois mortician's certification didn't match Arizona's requirements, so he set out to look for another line of work. He liked photography and caught on with the Arizona Republic newspaper. On one of his very first assignments, he was sent to shoot the races...

   This is the third installment in a series highlighting racetrack photographers. Each time we profile a photographer, TDN will feature their hand-selected favorite shots in multiple editions throughout the week. Tod Marks initially aspired to be a writer, and in four decades as a print journalist, he was drawn to reporting those offbeat "man bites dog" stories that require being able to see the surreal within the weave of the ordinary. That sensibility carries over to his Eclipse Award-winning Thoroughbred photography, which is rooted in the disciplines of patience...