From the moment Richard Prince first laid eyes on a ’67 Corvette in a car magazine, his life was set in motion – toward restoration, photography, and ultimately, a place in the Corvette Hall of Fame. In this episode of the Break/Fix Podcast, we trace Richard’s extraordinary journey from teenage wrench-turner to one of the most respected automotive photographers in the world.
Before the camera, there was the garage. Richard and his wife launched a full-service restoration business in 1988, specializing in vintage Corvettes. Working out of a home garage with little more than grit and determination, they tackled body-off restorations and built a reputation for excellence. By 1995, they sold the business to a fellow enthusiast, but the experience laid the foundation for everything that followed.
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A chance phone call from Vette Magazine editor D. Randy Riggs changed everything. Richard’s wife had written a letter to the editor, and when Riggs called to follow up, he offered a monthly column. Richard accepted – without even asking about payment. That column ran for over a decade and led to technical articles and car features, which required photography. When assigned photographers failed to deliver, Richard picked up the camera himself. What began as documentation for restorations quickly evolved into a professional pursuit.
In 1992, Richard and his wife commissioned a painting of their restored Sunray DX L88 Corvette – a car with a storied racing pedigree. That painting caught the eye of Gary Claudio, who years later became the marketing manager for Chevrolet Racing. In 1997, Claudio called Richard with a request: loan the car for the public unveiling of Corvette Racing at SEMA. Richard agreed – and asked for a favor in return: full access to document the program. Claudio said yes, and Richard became the embedded photographer for Corvette Racing.
Ever wonder where the iconic Jake logo came from? Richard was there. It started with pit crew member Donnell hiding skull stickers on the car, much to GM’s dismay. Marketing consultant Eddie Jabbour saw potential and sketched a stylized skull incorporating Corvette emblem elements. Gary Claudio named it “Jake,” after a team owner’s newborn son. Though GM resisted at first, fans embraced it – and Jake became a symbol of Corvette Racing’s edgy spirit.
Spotlight
Synopsis
This Break/Fix podcast episode features Richard Prince, an esteemed automotive photographer, journalist, and author, as he recounts his remarkable journey in the auto industry. Starting as a hobby in childhood, Prince’s love for cars led him to establish a vintage restoration business, which transitioned into a prolific career in automotive photography. Prince shares pivotal moments, including his discovery and restoration of a historic Corvette race car, which eventually led to his involvement with General Motors and Corvette Racing. He also recounts a severe injury he suffered at a 2019 VIR race, highlighting the risks of motorsport photography. Despite the challenges, Prince emphasizes the importance of finding joy and purpose in his work and life. The episode concludes with Prince offering insights and gratitude to the racing community and fans.
- Let’s talk about The who/what/where/when/how of YOU – you got your start in photography in 1991, but there must be a path up to that point?
- Did you originally go to school to become a photographer?
- Was there always a passion for cars and motorsports there?
- What drew you to motorsports?
- What was that moment or piece you would consider “your big break?”
- You were at the birth of Modern Corvette Racing back in 1997, what was that like? How did you get involved? Was it because of the restoration business or being a photographer
- Take us to VIR 2019: Catherine Legge (NSX) crash where you were involved.
- There’s many folks that want to break into this sort of work. Do you have any advice for those starting out? And those that are still plugging away? Anything you can share? (some do’s/don’ts)
- You keep a very busy schedule, but what’s next Richard Prince?
Transcript
Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder How did they get that job or become that person?
The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story
Crew Chief Eric: involved in the car hobby. Since his childhood, our guests founded a vintage restoration business after completing his graduate degree. And by 1991, his career had evolved into being an automotive photographer, journalist, and author.
Richard Prince has photographed for brands like Aston Martin, Audi, Bentley, Cadillac, Ferrari, Jaguar, Mercedes Benz, and at some of the most interesting locations and racetracks around the world. He’s published numerous books as well as authoring and illustrating thousands of magazine articles. There’s no doubt you’ve seen his [00:01:00] photography in dozens of books and over 400 publications in more than 80 countries worldwide.
And he’s here to tell us all about his exciting journey filled with twists and turns that he never thought his career would take him on. And with that, Richard, welcome to Brake Fix.
Richard Prince: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.
Crew Chief Eric: Well, Richard, like all good Brake Fix stories, there’s a superhero origin. So tell us about the who, what, when, and where of how you got involved in the automotive and motorsports world.
Take us back to the beginning, up through 1988, and this restoration business and the journey into photography. How did that all play out?
Richard Prince: Well, as with many people, it began as a hobby. It was mesmerized by certain cars. From early as childhood and among them were early Corvettes, E type Jaguars, certain Ferraris.
I was in love with first generation Camaros. Grew up at a time and in a place where cars were very central to young people’s lives. What really got me going was we went on a family trip to California [00:02:00] and while there my sister bought a copy of a car magazine and they happened to have an article about a 1967 Corvette.
I took one look at the photos of that car and I was absolutely infatuated. I was, I think about 12 years old. All of a sudden I couldn’t wait to get home because I wanted to get a job, start earning money so I can save money so that I could buy a, an early Corvette. And in fact, I did exactly that. I got home and the only job I could get at that age was a paper route and was cutting lawns and shoveling snow in the winter and doing anything I could to earn a little bit of money to, Save up for that car.
Crew Chief Eric: So do you think that magazine was a little bit of foreshadowing?
Richard Prince: It is always interesting looking back at how small things can ultimately really profoundly change the trajectory of one’s life. Had my sister not bought that magazine? Well, I still would have been in love with cars, but. Wouldn’t have been a turning point where I went from being interested in them as a 12 year old to being absolutely obsessed with earning the money to buy [00:03:00] one of these.
And I was still obviously several years away from being able to drive one. But yeah, it is interesting that. Her simple act of buying that magazine and sharing it with me changed a lot for me.
Crew Chief Eric: What did you go to school to study? Was photography at the front of your mind? Was that something you wanted to do?
Or even that was like a hobby in the background, something you were just doing because you enjoyed it?
Richard Prince: It was a hobby and I was not obsessed with it. Around four or five years old, my grandfather bought my sister and I, uh, I want to say a toy camera. It wasn’t a toy, they were real, but they were inexpensive kind of throwaway cameras.
And this was in the late 1960s. I was fascinated with it and loved it. A few years later, my parents gifted me a Polaroid camera. And of course that was like magic technology as well, but I did not, as a child, aspire to be a professional photographer. It just never occurred to me. I wasn’t infatuated with photography.
And I went to school for unrelated subjects. My undergraduate degree was in English and the history. And simply because I was [00:04:00] interested in those subjects, I did not know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Followed my heart and studied what I was interested in.
Crew Chief Eric: And then went to graduate school. And then started a restoration business.
How does that all work out?
Richard Prince: Well, it was a very intense hobby for my girlfriend, who’s now my wife and I, we did a complete restoration, our first complete restoration when I was at the end of my high school career, we had a 66 Corvette that has some, Rust in the chassis and the best way to fix that was to take the body off the chassis.
And we didn’t have facilities, we didn’t really have all the tools we needed, and we certainly didn’t have the experience we needed, but we were pretty fearless as a lot of teenagers are. So we dove right in and working out of our home garage at her parents house and mostly working in the driveway, we did a complete body off the chassis restoration of that car in circa 1981, 82.
And I went off to college in Manhattan, [00:05:00] and I did my four years there, and then, still not knowing what I wanted to do with myself, decided to go to law school, so I went to California, completed law school, and was working at a law firm in Los Angeles. And I had mixed feelings about staying there on the West coast, but I likely would have at least for some amount of time, but it was actually my girlfriend who became my wife, who was really determined to turn our hobby, which we both love very much into a business.
I was a little hesitant about that. I thought it might take a lot of the joy out of it if we had to do it every day, rather than doing it because we wanted to do it. I did realize. It would be much more difficult later on to walk away from a career and take a risk and start a business. I don’t know if it was a logical choice, but the logic seemed to be, I’m at the very beginning of my legal career, so I don’t have, A lot of time and effort invested in a trajectory there, and the trajectory is either toward [00:06:00] a partnership if you’re with a firm or typically toward building your own business, building up clientele and hiring people.
You know, once you get years into that investment, it’s very difficult to step away. And also, of course, it’s very difficult to step away from the income. I went from working your typical lower paying jobs. It’s through junior high school and high school and through college. And then all of a sudden I was earning a new lawyer’s salary and it was a lot of money to leave behind.
But three, four, five, seven years down the road, it would have been way more difficult. So I agreed to give it a try, give it one year, start a business and see how it goes. So that’s how we ended up in the car restoration business.
Crew Chief Eric: That was 1988. And in 1991, according to your resume, you started working as a photographer.
So in those three years, what changed? What was your big break? How did you suddenly go from doing the restorations and all these other plethora of things? As you said, trying to find your way. And now you’re behind the lens of a camera.
Richard Prince: Yeah, that’s [00:07:00] another very unusual part of my story. The answer involves my wife.
We were very, very busy right from the moment we opened the doors, we specialized in old Corvettes at any given time had five or six or seven of something else in the shop. We typically had about 18 or 20 vintage Corvettes and five or six or seven of something else. And that ranged from your typical muscle cars, SS Chevelles and Shelby Mustangs to one offs and odd cars.
I had one custom. We had a customer who was really fascinated with Paso Vegas, where it was a French made car. We restored a vintage MG. We had a customer with a vintage Bentley, a one off custom body Bentley. Well, what happened was my wife wrote a letter to the editor of Vet magazine. The editor at the time was a man named D, Randy Riggs.
He received her letter and was planning to publish it, but he had some questions. So he called the number that she provided in the letter, which was the shop number, and he spoke with her first. The [00:08:00] name of the business was Real Cars and he said, what’s Real Cars? And she explained it’s a full service restoration business.
He said, Oh, what a coincidence. I am looking for somebody with a lot of hands on experience with the cars who can write a column for me every month. Would you be interested? She doesn’t like writing. It’s not her thing. And so she immediately said, no, definitely not. Not for me, but maybe my husband would be interested.
He’s done quite a lot of writing, uh, all through his schooling career, and he enjoys writing. So she called me and I was in the shop. And it’s astounding when I think back, it was literally a two minute conversation, a very simple happenstance that changed the trajectory of my life in a way. We were super busy.
We’re open long hours. We had typically between 12 and 15 employees. There was a lot to do and a lot to manage. And so she called me in and said that the editor of that magazine is on the phone and he wants to ask you a question. And so he said, I’m looking for somebody to write a column. Would you be interested without thinking [00:09:00] deeply at all?
I just said a column about a lot. And he said, it’s up to you. Anything that you think is of interest to Corvette hobbyists. You write about whatever you want. Literally, in three seconds, I said, Okay, sounds like fun. I enjoy writing. But with one caveat, as long as you and I can agree that if you don’t like what I send you, or I don’t like doing it, we can part friends and there’ll be no hard feelings.
And he said, Deal. That’s how I got started. I started writing a column, a monthly column for that magazine, and it was toward the end of 1991, and I think the first column was published in March of 92. Another kind of funny part of this is, I never discussed payment with him. I was so focused on what was going on in the shop, you know, the things that I was responsible for, it didn’t occur to me to say, does this pay?
How much does it pay? It was a release for me. It was a, it was recreational, believe it or not. I enjoyed it. Great diversion from what I was doing every day. A few weeks later, a check arrived in the mail. That made it even better. So I [00:10:00] continued doing, I wrote that column for more than 10 years. Column quickly led to requests to write more.
I did quite a few technical articles in the beginning and car features as well. And those required photography. And initially for the first few photography assignments that went to somebody else. So I was. Asked to write about a certain car or a certain procedure. Somebody else was asked to do the photography and that didn’t work well.
I hate to say it, but the stereotype about the difficult artists that really grounded in reality. So some of the time the photographer just didn’t even show up. It felt like half the time when the photographer showed up, the photos were no good, they didn’t work. Why not? The location. was terrible. The light was terrible.
The lab ruined the film. All I could think of was, well, who chose the location? You did. Who chose the time of day when the light was no good? You did. And how many times can the lab ruin the film? We did a lot of photography as part of the [00:11:00] restoration business. Every extensive restoration that we did was photo documented.
So the owner of the car, when the restoration was completed, got a photo out. It was something nice to do for the customers. And it also was a way for us to document the work that we were doing. It wasn’t creative photography or art photography, but it was photography. So we were shooting 25, 30, 35 rolls of film every week because it was a busy shop with a lot of cars.
And I never once had the lab room in the film. So I quickly lost patience with the photographers. I was doing it because I enjoyed it, not because it was my livelihood or I needed to do it. I was doing it because I enjoyed it. And when the photographer didn’t show up with a lab room in the film, it certainly took the fun out of it for me.
So I immediately concluded I either had to just stop doing this. Or do the photography myself. That’s how I became a photographer.
Crew Chief Eric: Necessity breeds invention, right? In this case, I guess it begets a solution.
Richard Prince: Yes. I didn’t have any formal [00:12:00] training. I did have the kind assistance of my first editor. The man I mentioned, D Randy Riggs.
He was already an established, accomplished, talented photographer. He wasn’t in the habit of taking people who didn’t know what they were doing. Under his wing, but I already had a relationship with him and with the publisher because I was writing the column. So he helped me in the beginning to really get a grasp of the basics.
It’s not rocket engineering. It was, of course, a little more challenging. Back then, we’re talking 1992, no digital, it was all film. So there was obviously a disconnect between shooting the images and then seeing the images. So it was a little harder to learn quickly. Today, of course, you can see your mistakes immediately.
Again, it wasn’t super complicated for me, sort of a visual person, and I can think in a 3D kind of a way. It was pretty easy to get pretty good quickly. Getting better and better, of course, became more and more challenging.
Crew Chief Eric: So if I follow your chronology correctly, and listening to [00:13:00] other interviews you’ve done, and past times that we’ve gotten together, part of your story involves not just Corvette, But General Motors and the birth of Corvette Racing.
And you mentioned that you wrote this column for Vet Magazine for nearly 10 years. So if I do my math right, that puts us into the early 2000s. And Corvette Racing started in 1997, thereabouts. So how does that all come together? Is it a result of Vet Magazine? Was there another random phone call that got you in the door at General Motors?
Richard Prince: That’s an even stranger story. I say it is. It’s a most unlikely sequence of unrelated events that led me to where I am today. What happened with that was, we, my wife and I, discovered a long lost, very well known Corvette race car. We first encountered the car in 1988. I was after the engine that was in it.
The engine that was in the car at the time was the original engine for a different Corvette. They were both 67s. So there was a 67 [00:14:00] Coupe here on Long Island that had been raced since anybody could remember. The man who owned it owned two Corvettes at the same time. And in 1973, he took the 427, 435 horse engine out of his convertible.
It was original to the convertible and he put it in the Coupe and went racing with the Coupe. He sold the convertible with a different engine. In 1988, we contacted him with the intention of buying the engine. The tripower 427 that was in his coupe buying the convertible that that engine was original to and reuniting we called him he was very happy to sell us the engine.
I went to see the engine and didn’t occur to me. Maybe the car it’s in is. Something worth looking at. When I got there, there were things about that car that were super intriguing. It was a 67 coupe. It had been on MSO until 1987. The man who owned it, loaned it to somebody who raced at a [00:15:00] bridge Hampton, crashed it in 87.
And the man who owned it thought his. Intense racing days were winding down, and when he fixed the crash damage, he decided he would put the car on the street for the first time. Put more of an interior in it, and windshield wipers, and turn signals, and so on and so forth, and he went to a DMV office in New York in 1988 and registered that car for the first time.
I thought, well, that’s interesting. Here’s a car that was never registered. So obviously somebody bought this car to race when it was new. The man that owned it at the time, he bought it in 73 and he did not know anything about its history prior to 73. And at the time, not that I. I examined the car and there were some really intriguing things about the car itself.
It was a car equipped with an option called C48. C48 was a heater defrost to delete option. So every 67 Corvette started life with a heater and defroster system, buyers could delete that. [00:16:00] Chevrolet Bill 35, no heater cars in 1967. And I believe technically those cars were not even street legal because I believe in 1967, every car sold for street use in America had to have a windshield defroster.
So it was kind of a wacky option and a Corvette started in 1967. The base price was a little over 4, 000 and you could easily get over 5, 000 with some options and a really loaded car would approach 6, 000. So who would delete a heater system to save a few dollars? It didn’t make sense unless you were buying a car specifically to race and only the race.
I looked at the car and I knew it was a factory, no heater car. The most interesting thing about that is there were no rules. Anybody could buy a no heater car. If a buyer bought the L88 engine package, which was an all out road racing engine package, they could not get a heater in the car. Every L88 produced.
In 1967 was a no heater car. [00:17:00] They produced 20 L 80 eights. Of the 35 no heater cars produced. 20 of them were L 80 eights, 15 were not. I can do simple math. If you are looking at a 67 Corvette that you believe to be a factory, no heater, defroster car, there is better than a 50 50 chance you are looking at a factory, a 88 car.
And there were a few other things. The car had J 56 brakes. which by itself is not super rare. I think they made 236 J56 brake cars. That’s a heavy duty brake option. Every L88 had to have a J56 brake option. All of the pieces for the factory option were there, but there were also some pieces in the brake system that differed from normal production and that were not part of the J56.
production option. So that was highly unusual and quite interesting to me. The front chassis crossmember had an area where there was a section cut out. Steel had been shaped, placed in there, and welded in there to create a recess. There’s normally a recess in the front [00:18:00] crossmember to provide clearance for the harmonic balancer on big blocks.
So starting in 65, they all had a recess for the balancer. That car had an additional recess. The man who had the car didn’t know what it was. He said, that was there when I bought it. I don’t know what it’s for. I knew what it was for. It was to provide clearance for a dry sump on a big block Chevrolet engine.
So I said to myself, you know, you’re looking at a car that was never registered until 1987. It has an unusual brake system that goes beyond the factory big brake setup. It’s a factory no heater, no defroster car. And whoever owned this car prior to 1973 was running a dry sump big block. If you put that in the context of racing, In the late sixties into the early seventies, big block Corvettes raced in SCCA production, or if they were racing an FIA sanctioned races like Lamar or Sebring or Daytona.
Modifications were allowed, but I’m not aware, and I’m not saying it didn’t happen, but [00:19:00] I was not aware of anybody running a production based Corvette with a dry sump big block in it in that timeframe, dry sump, big block Chevrolet engines were found at that time in Can Am cars, for example, not in production Corvettes, putting all the pieces together.
I said, this is a super interesting car. Well, we ultimately ended up buying the car, still didn’t know it’s early history. We were researching it. It was a long tedious process, but we ultimately got back to the owner before the man we bought it from and the owner before him. And that car was in fact, a factory L88 car.
It was owned new by an oil company called the Sunray DX oil company. They bought it specifically to go road racing from Yanko Chevrolet. Yanko race prepared the car and it was the GT winner at the 12 hours of Sebring in 1967. And it was the GT winner in the 24 hours of Daytona in 1968. So it was super, super rare, highly [00:20:00] valuable and fascinating car.
We restored it to its Sebring configuration, spent thousands of hours researching the history of the car, traveled all over the country, did video interviews with everybody who was still alive, who was connected to the car, it took me from coast to coast and Believe it or not to the Eisenhower presidential library, because man named Clyde Wheeler was the vice president at Sunray DX oil.
He later became a cabinet member in the Eisenhower administration and all his papers ended up in the Eisenhower Memorial library in Kansas. So anyway, my wife and I restored it. We showed it. We’ve been to trace that we adored it and we commissioned an artist. To do a painting of that car. It was the first and last time we’ve ever hired an artist to do a painting for us.
I asked some people at Chevrolet who I was friendly with, that they could recommend a automotive fine artists. They recommended Charles Maher in Michigan. We hired him. He did the painting and when it was completed, he [00:21:00] asked us if he could display it at an automotive fine artists society show in Detroit.
And of course we said, sure. He displayed that painting at an AFAS show. Coincidentally, a man named Gary Claudio went to see that show. Corvette guy, car guy, he fell in love with the painting and wanted to buy it. And the artist explained to him it was a commissioned work. It’s not for sale. Somebody already owns it.
And Gary said, well, maybe whoever you did the work for would sell it to me. And the artist said, I doubt it. I’ll pass your info along to them, but I doubt they’ll sell it. It’s a couple in New York and they own the actual car that’s shown. That was in 1992. Yeah. Three, four years later, that same man, Gary Claudio was the marketing manager for Chevrolet racing, a planning meeting, they were discussing delivery for this race program.
That’s coming. He was planning the public unveil of the program, which took place at SEMA in 1998, and he’s a Corvette buff [00:22:00] and a Corvette history enthusiast, and he thought, wouldn’t it be cool if I could put together a display with some historically significant vintage Corvette race cars. And he immediately thought of that painting and the Sunray DX LED8.
So he tracked down the artist and from the artist got my phone number and my name. One day in late 1997, my phone rang and it was another astounding conversation as was the conversation with Randy Riggs. It was a couple of minutes long and it really did change the trajectory of my life. He called and asked me, and I said, this is Richard Prince.
And he said, Richard, I want to ask a big favor of you, but before I ask the favor, I have to know if I can trust you. I thought it was a prank. I was living in New York at the time on Long Island. I was working in Manhattan. The guy on the other end of the phone had a distinct Long Island accent. So I said, okay, this is one of my idiot friends.
And there’s some kind of a joke or a prank, and I couldn’t place a voice, I didn’t know who it was, in the middle of writing a [00:23:00] story, and I was busy, and I, he said, okay, whatever, I’ll play along, so, he said, before I ask you for this big favor, I have to know if I can trust you, and I said, buddy, you can trust me with your life, what do you need, and I thought I was gonna get a punchline, and it was gonna be a ha ha, and he said, my name is Gary Claudio, I’m the marketing manager for Chevrolet Racing, And I want to borrow your 1967 L88 race car for a display.
We have a factory road race program coming and we’re going to Unvalid. And, and of course, in that instant, I knew that it wasn’t a prank. And he said, I got your name and number from Charles Maher. I saw your painting a few years ago. I said, yes, I’m happy to loan you the car. And we had another historic Corvette race car and SCCA national championship winning C1 Corvette at the time.
And I said, I have another Corvette you might be interested in and you can borrow both of them. And now I’d like to ask you for a favor. And I did say the answer to my question, um, doesn’t change the outcome of my willingness to loan you these cars. I [00:24:00] said, at the present time, I’m writing and photographing cars for a whole variety of magazines.
And this race program sounds really cool. I would like to basically join the team and bed with the program and have unlimited permission to go wherever they go and to photograph whatever it is that they’re doing. And I’ll stick with the program. It was scheduled to be a three year program, so there was about a year and a half of testing and then three years of racing.
I said, I’ll start immediately. I’ll go where they go. I’ll stick with the testing and the three years of racing. And when it’s over, I will produce a book about it. I wasn’t asking GM to pay for it. I was just asking for permission to do it without hesitating. He said, you got it. So that in a nutshell is how I became a racing photographer
Crew Chief Eric: and to not take us down a slightly different path.
But I have a question to ask because you’re probably one of the few people that might know where Jake came from. Is it because of Gary Claudio? Is it something that somebody [00:25:00] said? Where does that iconic? Figure of Corvette racing come from since you were there at its inception.
Richard Prince: Yeah. Gary Claudio figures prominently in that story.
Then it’s the sort of thing that quickly morphs into sort of an urban legend. And over time, the details are forgotten and the key players can be forgotten some number of years ago. I did a deep dive into that. And I wrote a very detailed article about Jake because I saw all kinds of explanations around that I knew were wrong.
What happened with that is, some of the team management, specifically, most specifically, Doug Feehan, who was the program manager for Corvette Racing from the beginning for many years, thought that a key to the program’s success was reaching younger people. GM is a very conservative company, and it has been for a long time.
Feehan and others thought, we need to get edgier, we need to Find ways to reach out to, and to make friends with younger people. So he actually hired a very small edgy marketing agency that was based in New York [00:26:00] city run by a guy named Eddie Jabbour to come on board and to help figure this out, how do we develop this persona and reach a younger audience?
Eddie came to Lamar to just start to get a feel for the team and to get an understanding sort of brainstorm and come up with some ideas. At the same time, there was a crew member, one of the truck drivers, and one of the pit crew members, a guy named Don Nell, who had a little bit of a fascination with skulls.
It’s just sort of something that he enjoyed. It’s like sort of a biker culture thing, you know, skulls figure prominently in mythology and in literature. And Don just loved these skulls. He, um, started putting little skull stickers and little skull pins around on the car. And some executives at GM were highly annoyed by that.
And it became a little bit of a cat and mouse thing. So Don would hide these little skulls. They’d appear here, there, everywhere. And then somebody from GM would take the sticker off the car or these little metal [00:27:00] pins. Eddie took notice of that, thought, how can we sort of harness this? This is edgy and this is kind of funny and cool.
And he literally on a napkin drew what became Jake. He conceived the idea with Gary Claudio doing this sort of stylized skull that incorporated key elements of the Corvette Emble. That napkin and that drawing still exists. That’s where the skull logo came from. The name Jake came from Gary Claudio.
Claudio, prior to Corvette, was with Pontiac racing. One night at a, at a race, Gary and some of the crew people went out, and they had dinner, and they had probably too much to drink. And on the way back to the hotel, somebody stole a lawn ornament. You know, one of the old fashioned, the little guy holding the, uh, little pail.
So they stole this lawn ornament because they thought it was funny and they brought it back to the track the next day. It became sort of the team mascot, this lawn [00:28:00] ornament, dress them up and they got a credential for him. Gary named the lawn ornament Jake, and it was named after a recently born baby of one of the team principals.
One of the team owners had a son born. The son’s name was Jay. So they named the. Team mascot after the son of the team owner. Once the skull logo was created, Eddie Jabbour drew it out on the napkin. Gary christened the new mascot, Jake. So that is how that happened. And then there was a stretch there where GM really didn’t embrace it.
People at GM who thought it was the wrong image. So there was this. A little bit of tension and this constant back and forth with these jakes showing up everywhere. They started showing up everywhere. It was showing up on t shirts. It seemed to be coming from a website called Bad Boy Vets. And the website was created to look like a couple of 14 or 15 year old bad boys, bratty young teenagers created this thing.
It was really edgy, but it was actually Eddie Jabbour [00:29:00] who created the website. And that was pushing this Jake Skull logo. Over time, the fans really embraced it. Pretty soon, some designers at Chevrolet took a liking to it. It reached sort of tidal wave proportions where the people at GM who thought it was a bad idea, just couldn’t resist anymore.
Eventually it was completely embraced by General Motors and you’ll see Jake now it’s all over the C8s. It was on the C7s, it was on C6s, it was imprinted on the under hood insulation, and it’s showing up embroidered on seats and in body graphics. So that, that’s a somewhat abridged version of the Jake logo.
Crew Chief Eric: As we switch gears into the next segment, one question that sort of still lingers here from your origin story is, what about your restoration business? Is Real Cars still around? Is that something you’re still doing now for fun? Or did you put all that to bed?
Richard Prince: Well, we sold that business in 1995 and stayed on in the transition period.
We sold it to a friend of [00:30:00] ours who was already in the restoration business. He’s an interesting character. He was actually also obsessed with Corvettes and turned a hobby into a business long before we did, but he was always sort of flying under the radar. He didn’t have proper operating licenses and we were completely compliant, which was a full time job in and of itself.
We had painted. So we had permits for everything, paint storage, emissions, the spray booth. Fire suppression system, waste management, all this, you know, it’s very difficult, especially in New York to maintain a legitimate business doing automotive work and body work and painting. And so he needed to sort of come out of the shadows and it was a match made in heaven.
He bought the business and he kept his name. So the name no longer exists, but he’s still going and he’s still very actively restoring, doing beautiful work, mostly Corvettes, but other cars as well. So we stayed on through the end of 1995 and then stayed there another, about another five months, because we had a car of [00:31:00] our own that was in process and it was a part, the body was off the chassis.
And I knew at that point. Point, we were going to move on to other things and we needed to put that car back together because otherwise it would stay apart for a long, long time. So we stayed there until, uh, like may or so of 1996. And we had a target date that car went to the special collection in Bloomington for display there in June.
So we had a good date to work to her and we finished that car after that. It was a long time. Before my wife and I did any restoration work again, I got super busy starting in 1997 with the racing work. And it was a whole new environment, a whole new world. And the established photographers who had been shooting racing for a long period of time, some of them at that point already 20 plus years, they all told me the same thing.
They all had the same advice, which is this is a brutal business. The programs come and go, the factories are in, they’re out. Don’t get used to it. Don’t [00:32:00] give up your day job. And my day job was writing and photography for primarily editorial clients. Working on my first book at that point in late 98 or early 99.
But I followed their advice. I didn’t give up my day job. And the racing just got bigger and busier and busier and busier. So I ended up with two jobs and then three jobs. There wasn’t time for the
Crew Chief Eric: cars. Well, Richard, let’s take a pit stop here as we transition into the next segment, and let’s talk about your travels around the world, and you know, we ask folks on the show all the time, you know, is there a bucket list track you’d like to race at, or you’d like to attend, or if you could go back in time, you know, which driver on which track, you know, those kinds of things, But you’ve been to so many interesting places in the world and to so many locations, I kind of have to frame it in a very simple way, which is as a photographer, what is some of the best or maybe worst places to photograph in terms of racetracks in the world?
Richard Prince: I am a hundred percent committed [00:33:00] to find happiness everywhere. So even the tracks that I enjoy less for one reason or another, or the events that I enjoy less, I still enjoy them. I just enjoy them less. If I had to pick one track, one event, it would be the 24 Hours of Le Mans. I love the long races to begin with.
I’m a history buff. My undergraduate degree is in history. I still read a lot about history. The only real TV I watch is documentaries about history. And of course, the sense of history there is unmatched. That race began in 1923, and aside from a few years of interruption during the Second World War, it has been held every year, and every year, the best teams, the best drivers with the best cars come from everywhere in the world to race there.
You ask any driver in any discipline. Multi Formula One world champions, MotoGP world champions, best top fuel drag racers in the world. It doesn’t matter. Every one of them [00:34:00] wants to add a win at Le Mans to their resume. I just adore it. So I, I went there for the first time and, 2000 when Corvette went there, Corvette did not go during the COVID year in 2020.
So I didn’t go either this year was my 24th, and it’s not the same experience. Of course, there’s no getting around that. There’s always an evolution. The first time for anything is going to be different from the second time. And the third time is going to be different from the second time. And the 10th time is going to be different from the fifth time, but I’ve never gotten tired of it all.
Board with it. It’s exciting for me every single year and I look forward to it every single year. And part of the challenge there, and this is not exclusive to Le Mans, but it applies to Le Mans. It applies to everywhere I go. I still go to new tracks once in a while. I’ve photographed over a thousand races now.
A lot of the tracks I’ve been there 30, 35, 40, 50 times, but I still go to some new ones. One of the great challenges and [00:35:00] thrills of going back to the same place. For the 20th time, or the 25th time, or the 50th time, it’s trying to see it in a different way, trying to find something new, one new angle of view, one new location, one new something to create a different photograph that I didn’t create the first 15 or the first 40 times I’ve been there.
It’s obviously increasingly difficult. The more times I’ve been to a given track, I say there’s always something new, and the challenge is to find it. Always something new, and it’s super, super gratifying to do that.
Crew Chief Eric: We’ve had the privilege of sitting down with a lot of different pro drivers on the show, and you hear all about the war stories, and the battles, and the things that happened on track.
And there you are on the other side of the fence, as Bill Warner likes to say when he was here. And you got to capture those moments, those battles, those wars that we saw play out on television, and that we hear the big fish stories later and all those kinds of things, but there was a point in your [00:36:00] life.
And as you said, it’s a series of unrelated events that have come together. Where these two things converged, the story we saw on TV, the story that you hear about, and your life, those two paths cross, and it takes us to V. I. R. in 2019. And what I’m referring to is, if anybody saw it, it’s Catherine Legge’s crash in the NSX.
And unbeknownst to many of us that were watching it on TV, you’re like, oh my god, she wrecked, you know, this and that. There’s another side to the story that many people don’t know. And so I want to Open the conversation up for you to share that experience in your own words, what that crash meant to you and how it changed your life in an impactful way.
Richard Prince: No pun intended. Yes, it was impactful way because I was impacted. You know, racing is, it’s a dangerous environment anyway. You slice it way, way safer than it’s ever been, but it’s still a dangerous environment. And credentialed photographers are allowed to go in areas that the public is not, where it is Potentially more dangerous.
And on that [00:37:00] fateful day at the uh, IMSA race at VIR in August of 2019, I was in one sense, in the wrong place at the wrong time. The car crashed, it struck the steel barrier, and I was right there. And I saw the car coming about a second before the impact. So I didn’t have a lot of time. I had three cameras with me, three bodies, three lenses.
Actually set them down and set myself down, crouched down behind the crash barrier, the barriers that the IR are not setting concrete. They just set into the earth. I wasn’t raining at that moment, but it had been raining in the days prior to the race. So the ground was particularly soft. The grass was wet still, which helped the car probably had a tire failure.
I, I, I, I don’t think there was a definitive understanding of the crash. What happened? There wasn’t two cars that came together. The NSX by itself suffered a sequence of failures that left Katherine with no steering and no brakes. And the car made a left turn, went off the track, and went along the [00:38:00] grass, which was wet, which didn’t help slow it down, obviously.
It struck the steel barrier going quite fast. I was told it was going at about 156 miles an hour when it struck the barrier, and it drove the barrier back about three feet, and one of the steel I beams supporting it struck me in my torso. This has changed now. They did remedy this, but at that time, there was about a three foot wide aisleway between the steel crash barrier and a cabled catch fence.
The cabled catch fence came about because of the condominiums that they built trackside there. So they built the condos and they didn’t want the people who were enjoying the condos to be able to go right up to the crash barrier. So they built this cabled catch fence and they only put it a few feet off the crash barrier, I guess, to maximize the front lawns of the condominiums.
So there was no escape. I couldn’t get far away from the barrier. So I hit the ground and I was struck. It was an interesting [00:39:00] experience for sure. Never lost consciousness. I wasn’t even knocked over, but it was a hard hit. Initially. I thought I actually might be dead because I was at a racetrack and it was of course, noisy.
There was a race going on still. And in the instant that I was struck, I heard the most complete silence that I’ve ever experienced in my life. I was fully conscious and was thinking to myself, is this the end? The beginning of the journey after one’s life concludes this pure silence. I gathered my thoughts and said, I don’t think you’re dead.
I think I’m very much alive. I knew I’d been injured. I thought I probably had a, at least a couple of broken ribs. But my breathing felt fine. My head wasn’t struck, so I wasn’t worried and I really just wanted to get out of there. I didn’t want to be part of the story. The Corvettes were in the battle there for the lead in the class.
They were, uh, I think running second and third or second and fourth at the point where the accident took place. And there was about 20 minutes left in [00:40:00] the race. And so I knew even if they didn’t pass, one of them didn’t pass to take the lead, they were going to be on the podium. I just wanted to get out of there and shoot the podium.
But fortunately I couldn’t escape because when the car hit, there were light truck tires that were bolted together. And the car actually, I think, dove under the tires before it hit the steel barrier. And it pitched a whole grouping of, it was about 17 tires or something, over the steel barrier. And it landed between the fence.
And I was quite fortunate that didn’t land on me. I did a rough calculation later on, and that grouping of tires weighed about 1, 600 pounds. So had that landed on me, we wouldn’t be speaking today. But, it blocked my exit. It was my left side that was struck, and I had temporary paralysis. I couldn’t move my left arm.
And I had As I said, three cameras and three lenses to carry, uh, including a 300 millimeter 2. 8 and a 500 millimeter 2. 8. So they’re big and they’re [00:41:00] heavy and I have one arm, so I couldn’t get out of there. And that turned out to be, uh, fortunate. A friend of mine, a man named Bill Miller, who is a commercial airline pilot, In real life, but he’s also a huge racing enthusiast and he’s a professional race spotter.
So he goes to, I think, just about all the IMSA races and he acts as, uh, works as a spotter for one or sometimes more teams. So they place people around the track. With a radio headset and they’re helping the driver to understand the track situation. If there’s a crash with his oil on the track where they’re coming up on a slower car, whatever the circumstances are, the spotter can help the driver.
So that’s what Bill Miller was doing. And he happened to be right nearby and he saw the whole thing and he came running over and he was on the other side of the catch fence. And he was screaming at me, you’re getting in that ambulance. You don’t know what you’re talking about. I was saying, I got the wind knocked out of me, but I think I’m okay.
And he was screaming, you’re not okay. You’re in shock. You could be badly hurt. You’ve got to go to the [00:42:00] medical center, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was stubborn and foolish and resisting. I looked okay. I wasn’t bleeding. I had no external apparent injuries. The emergency crews got there like a dummy. I would have avoided the ambulance, but Bill Miller was screaming at me, and he was screaming at the EMTs.
You’ve got to take this guy. He was struck being stubborn and foolish. I was explaining to the empties. Yeah, I did get hit, but I think I’m okay. I feel fine. I need to go with you. Bill Miller was behind that fence. I won’t repeat what he was saying because he was using some foul language, really screaming at me and I was sort of feeling pressured there.
Then what happened was I lost the vision in my left eye. I initially thought there was maybe some mud on my glasses. You can see this actually on the TV coverage. The helicopter was hovering above. I took my glasses off to clean the mud off of them, and there wasn’t a mud on them. That was a horrifying moment because I realized that.
I lost the vision of my left [00:43:00] eye, and I thought, you know, my optic nerve’s been severed, or my retina’s disconnected, or something horrible has happened here, and I’m now half blind, so I agreed to get the ambulance. Bill Miller’s screaming at me, and I lost the vision of my left eye. So that’s how I ended up in the ambulance.
And then there’s no medical center at BIR. There’s just a medical room where there’s a, a doctor and a nurse, and a blood pressure machine, and some basics. So we were on our way there and we got about halfway and the vision returned in my eye and I then just wanted outta the ambulance like a moron. And again, I felt okay.
I was in pain. It hurt, but it wasn’t excruciating pain, and my breathing was fine. I wanted out of the ambulance, but of course, once I was in, they couldn’t let me go. There’s nothing else for liability reasons. We got back to the medical room. No external injuries. I wasn’t bleeding. Nothing was obviously wrong.
Took my blood pressure. That is the one and only time in my whole life I’ve got high blood pressure. [00:44:00] My blood pressure is normally picture perfect, exactly where it’s supposed to be. So when I heard the numbers, I was like 156 over 119 or something. I thought, oh boy, that’s not good, but they looked at it and said, well, you know, at your age, you’ve just been involved in a traumatic accident.
Your blood pressure is not bad. It’s okay. And I’m thinking, not bad. It’s never ever been high under any circumstances. Anyway, they said, you know, you really, you were struck in the torso. You really need to, at least to get an x ray, you need to go to the hospital and get an x ray. Do you have somebody who can drive you?
I said, well, I have a lot of friends and a lot of people I know here, but everybody I know is here working. So yeah, I can get somebody to drive me, but it’s not going to be for a couple of hours. I said, well, that’s, that’s not good. You have to go now. And I said, well, I’ll drive myself. And they said, well, we can’t let you drive yourself because you suffered at least some kind of an injury.
There wasn’t a medevac helicopter there, but they dismissed it because I kept saying I’m fine. [00:45:00] They gave the ambulance crew the bad news that they had to take me to the hospital and the race had ended at that point and I think they were ready to go home so they were a little disappointed and I was a little disappointed because I really didn’t want to go to the hospital, but that’s where I was going so got in the ambulance and I’m the whole time I’m saying, I’m okay, I’m fine.
So they never put the lights on and don’t put the siren on we just. Stuck in traffic over an hour because the race had ended and the BIR is in a rural area in uh, southern Virginia, right near the North Carolina border and there’s just one country road in and one out and there were 40, 000 people there watching the race and when the race ended it was a A giant traffic jam.
So it was a long slog to get to the, it was a little over an hour to get to the hospital. We went to Danville Regional Hospital, which is not the place to go to if you’ve suffered a severe traumatic injury. But I kept saying, I’m okay. I looked okay. So that’s where we went. And it was terrible for my wife.
It was much worse for my wife than it was [00:46:00] for me. I was calm. I was at peace. I didn’t understand what my injuries were at that point, but I was, I was okay. And once I was in the ambulance, I thought, well, I better call her.
Crew Chief Eric: And nothing like this had ever happened to you before. This is the first time in all your many years.
Richard Prince: To this day, I’ve never had a car accident. I’ve driven over a million miles. I’ve never had a car accident. I never had a broken bone in my life. And I did stupid things as a kid. I was just lucky. I fell off my bike plenty of times. I rode motorcycles, dirt bikes, Got banged up and scraped up and cut and so on and so forth.
I needed some stitches when I was a child here and there, but I never had a broken bone, never had a blunt force trauma injury. So it was all new. I called my wife in the ambulance and she watches every race. She’s a massive race fan, much bigger race fan than I am. She watched the race. And I said, there was a crash at the end.
And she said, yeah, I know the Acura. Really whack the wall. And I said, well, I was kind of caught up in that accident. [00:47:00] And she immediately lost her mind, started screaming. Don’t lie to me. I know you’re lying to me. How bad is it? Don’t sugarcoat it. And then, uh, we lost the cell signal. Cell phone coverage is not so great because again, it’s a rural area.
And we were literally crawling along. And I had no cell signal, she absolutely freaked out and she found some numbers from some of my photographer friends and started making phone calls. And none of them knew anything. They knew I wasn’t at the podium and I wasn’t in the photo room after it was over, which was a little weird, but I was out there by myself when the crash happened.
She got no information. It wasn’t until it was about an hour and 10 minutes later, when we got to the hospital that I was able to call her again. So that was a very, very difficult time for her because she intuitively knew that it was bad. And it was bad, as it turns out. So they called the hospital ahead of time, and it’s a regional hospital.
There was, there were no specialists there. They had to call specialists. So they had an [00:48:00] x ray tech and he did an x ray to start with. You know, the loss of the vision of my left eye was the first horrifying moment. The look on the face of the x ray technician after he did the x ray was the second horrifying moment.
And I said that to him. He was looking at his screen and looking at me, looking at the screen, looking at me. And he had a look of absolute disbelief on his face. And I said, you were looking at me as though you find it shocking that I’m still alive. What do you see? And he didn’t answer me, and I said, Look, I know I at least have a couple of broken ribs.
And he said, You have a lot more than a couple of broken ribs. There’s a surgeon on the way, and I’m going to let her explain it to you, because I’m really not supposed to interpret the x ray and give you my opinion. They called her, and she had asked them to do a an upper body scan, so I went in for the scan before she got there.
Uh, then she arrived. Even in the midst of this, I found it humorous. And I thought, man, I wish some of my buddies were here to laugh along with me. But [00:49:00] she was called in, she wasn’t in hospital. So she didn’t have the doctor’s outfit on. She didn’t have the stethoscope around her neck. She just didn’t look like a doctor.
She looked at the scan and she said you need a thoracotomy, a chest tube, and I said, well, I assume that is what it sounds like, but I’ve never had an injury of any sort. I’ve never had a chest tube. What does that entail? And she described the procedure to me, and I said, well, that’s barbaric. No thanks.
Give me another option, and she said, you’re an adult, you’re not inebriated, you’re not even in shock. If you refuse treatment as much as it hurts me, I have to honor that. And I said, I’m not refusing treatment, I’m just refusing the chest tube. Give me another option, and she looked at her watch and she said, you have two choices.
either a chest tube, or you’ll be dead in 30 minutes. Your chest cavity is filling with blood, it’s about one third full, and when it reaches a certain point, your heart will stop. The [00:50:00] blood will compress the vessels in your chest, you’re still bleeding, and the only good thing I can say about it is it will be relatively quick and relatively painless.
And I said, I’ll take the chest tube. Thank you. The funniest part of this, it was funny. We were heading toward the operating room, and she asked me where I’m from. And I said, Long Island. And she said, Oh, I go to Long Island all the time. And I said, Naive me. But do you have family there? And she said, No, my psychic is all along.
That’s what I thought. Oh, damn it. I wish somebody some friend of mine was here to hear this. This is ridiculous. I found it hilarious, actually, um, she described the procedure, and I had just one question. It entails putting a titanium tube through the torso into the pleural cavity, and it’s gotta be forced through.
I said, okay, it goes through the flesh, [00:51:00] through the rib cage, and through the chest cavity. What stops it? Because I’m not a doctor, I had a collapsed lung, and that’s what was the source of the bleeding. And I said, you can live with one lung, but you can’t live with no lung. So, when that tube is plunged in, what stops it from piercing the other lung?
And she said, well, that’s my burden. That’s where the skill of the surgeon comes in. So, that was it. The operation was a success. Oh, by the way, it was painful. That’s, uh, another thing I’ll mention. I got no anesthesia. Not even the topical. So it starts with a scalpel, and then it’s a lot of procedure. I won’t get gory, but no anesthesia.
And man, did that hurt. I later, I had to see a pulmonologist and other specialists. When I got back home for follow ups for a couple of years and I asked the pulmonologist, is there some medical reason why you can’t get anesthesia or at least a local when you get a chest tube? And he thought it was kind of funny.
He said, [00:52:00] no, no, no reason. Well, why didn’t they give me one? And he said, there’s no such thing as you, you don’t schedule a chest tube. It’s always an emergency. It’s always a life and death situation. And the vast majority of the time, the patient is unconscious, so it’s just habit. You just do it. I learned my lesson.
Next time I need a chest tube, I’m asking for the anesthesia. Anyway, that evening after my first night there, I saw an orthopedic surgeon and a neurologist, and the neurologist said to me, you’re not going to appreciate this now, but you’ll appreciate it later. You are the single luckiest person on the face of the earth today.
Because I was walking when I saw the car coming, and I just hit the ground. Again, it had about a second. He said, if you had taken one step fewer, that I beam would have hit your head, and you wouldn’t be here. You would have died essentially immediately, instantly. And if you had taken one step more, that I beam would have struck you in your waist, below the ribcage, and it would have caused massive internal bleeding, you know, the force of the blow, [00:53:00] and you would have just led to death.
Before they got to you. He also said, this is not where you come when you have the injuries that you have. This is a regional hospital. You belong to a level one trauma center. Had you been bleeding at a greater rate, and we would have fully expected that you would have been given the extent of the injury, you should have been bleeding out faster than you are.
You should have died in that ambulance, and even if you made it to the hospital, if you were right on the edge, there was nobody here to save your life. No surgeon here. Everybody had to be called in. So you are super, super lucky to be alive. And that’s the way I feel. The force of that blow shattered my scapula, broke nine ribs, tore my rotator cuff up, caused a massive edema, chest wall trauma, collapsed lung, internal bleeding.
Crew Chief Eric: You felt fine. You were good to go.
Richard Prince: Yeah. Double. That’s the story. I feel super lucky and it wasn’t certainly wasn’t a happy story. It was a happy story for the track or for the series or for GM and I [00:54:00] have to say there’s no other experience like staring down the abyss and coming face to face with your own mortality.
It’s a unique experience and if you digest it and contemplate it and put it in the right perspective, it can dramatically increase your appreciation for life and that’s what it’s done for me. It made me way more committed to enjoy every second. But ultimately, like I said, even the races that I don’t enjoy as much, even the travel that I do, I try to find happiness in every single thing that I do.
And I try to find some happiness in everything. And that includes this story about the crash of VIR. And I really do. I’m not trying to fool myself. I find happiness in everything. I really do.
Crew Chief Eric: Did you ever sit down with Catherine and talk about this experience together?
Richard Prince: She was going quite fast. And she did what drivers are trained to do, which is take your hands off the steering wheel when you have no [00:55:00] control of the car and you’re about to hit something at a very high impact.
Everybody’s instinct to grab that wheel with all your might, and what happens is when the car hits something, that wheel can be jerked suddenly one way or the other with such force that it’ll break your wrists, break your arms. So she said that she crossed her arms, and she prayed, because she was convinced that Given the rate of speed, she was convinced that she was not going to come out of that okay.
And she did. And she only learned afterwards that somebody else had been injured. She called me the following day, the Monday when I was in the hospital. I went to the next race, which was crazy. Another crazy part of the story. And we had a chat at the racetrack. Yeah, she felt terrible, but it wasn’t her fault.
The crash was not her fault. It was either a tire failure or a mechanical failure in the car. And you know what? Even if it was her fault, I’m a big believer in personal responsibility. I understand the work that I do entails some level of risk, and certain places on certain tracks have a higher level of risk, and I [00:56:00] chose to be there.
And so I’m, I’m responsible, even if The driver made a mistake that led to the crash. I’m still responsible for me being there, so I accept full
Crew Chief Eric: responsibility for it. Up until that point, like we said, nothing had really happened. You know, you get up on the ladders, you’re in a tree, behind the fences, you’re shooting the cars.
Life is good. And then this happens. And then you learn from it. You adapt and you overcome. As we’ve seen at many a track day, whether it’s a professional event, or it’s an HPD, you know, there’s always some sort of trackside photographer at a lot of these events, you know, they’re out there either trying to get started to make their name, or they’re still just kind of plugging away at it.
So knowing what, you know, now looking back over. This incident and your entire career as a photographer, is there some sort of wisdom that you can pass on? Maybe some do’s and don’ts to these photographers that are out there?
Richard Prince: Sure. In terms of safety, absolutely. Because photography is a passion driven endeavor.
People who end up in racing photography typically love racing and they love photography. It’s a [00:57:00] very emotional, personal, passion driven activity. In that environment, in those circumstances, it can be very easy to take more risks. My photographer buddies and I, we will often say anything for the shot, facetiously, but to some extent, it does apply, where you will take risks.
It’s certainly, what happened to me, is certainly a reminder that the dangers out there are real. And sometimes it’s just not worth it. It’s just not worth the shot. And I’ll give you another example where I apply that. Lime Rock, which is a beautiful natural terrain road course, historic road course, can lead to the creation of very beautiful photography.
It’s a wooded rural area. It’s in Connecticut. The tick population is super high. For many years, certain areas, certain shots that to get to those areas, you go through the woods, you just track through the woods every year. I tracked through the woods and I come out with ticks on me, they’re just in there and I reached a point just a few years ago where I said, you [00:58:00] know, this is, it’s not like getting hit by a car where you’re bleeding internally, but.
Ticks can lead to serious problems, debilitating diseases, Lyme disease, this and that. I’m super lucky. I’ve been bitten many times and I don’t have Lyme disease or Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or any of the other tick borne ailments, but everybody’s luck runs out eventually. I just decided none of these photographs are worth the risk.
So my advice is, yeah, I understand the mentality and I’m not suggesting anybody crawl under a rock or be overly risk averse. As with everything else in life, there’s a reasonable balance point, a sensible place to be to extend yourself, work harder. You’re always taking some chances. You get out of bed in the morning, you’re taking a chance to advance the art and adventure business.
Understand that there’s also a line in the sand that you determine that for yourself in many instances. Uh, of course, to some extent it’s determined for us. We’re not allowed to go certain places. But even [00:59:00] within the realm of the places where we are allowed to go, sometimes it’s okay to make that choice and say, you know, I just don’t feel comfortable here.
And what has changed for me is there are places, and you ask any race photographer who does a lot of racing, There are certain places and certain tracks that just feel less safe than others. Maybe statistically they are or they aren’t, but they just feel less safe. There are some places where I just won’t go, but there are places where I feel less safe.
I still want to get the shot. I still want to go there. I’ll just spend less time there. So that’s how I, in my mind, mitigate the risk. You just have to make those choices and make smart choices. At the end of the day, we all want to go home to the ones we love, and so you just have to make smart choices.
Crew Chief Eric: You said before, Richard, you keep a very, very busy schedule throughout the year, so I have to ask, what’s next?
Richard Prince: What’s next? Uh, usually, In past years, this would be kind of a blind time for me because racing tapers down and I [01:00:00] do other things. I’m still doing a lot of editorial work and doing a lot of new car photography for Cadillac and Chevrolet and other car companies as well.
But the car show season is getting underway with the LA car show and the chariot car show. So there’s typically one or two new car projects this time of the year. The racing season has started. Slowly, but steadily expanded in the last two weeks. I’ve been in seven different countries. What’s next is, uh, let’s see.
I’ll write some stories for, um, Hemings and I have a new book out this year, a new, uh, Corvette C8 book. I’ll do a book signing. The beginning of January, I will be at home working on that 65 Corvette and doing house stuff and doing some writing, spooching up my dogs. My son’s got a car project that I’m immersed in as well.
So I’ll be helping him to try to get that
Crew Chief Eric: wrapped
Richard Prince: up.
Crew Chief Eric: Speaking of wrapping up, Richard, we’ve reached that part of the episode where I like to invite our guests to share any shout outs, promotions, or anything [01:01:00] else that we haven’t covered thus far.
Richard Prince: One thing I can think of is I’ve written five books.
Three of them are in print. The C8 Corvette book was published this year. I wrote a 70th anniversary Corvette book that was published last year and a C3 Corvette restoration guidebook that was published 25 years ago, but it’s still in print.
Crew Chief Eric: Oh, and by the way, congratulations on being inducted into the Corvette Hall of Fame.
Richard Prince: Oh, thank you. Yeah, that is a very, very nice honor. Very, uh, much appreciated. I enjoyed the event. It was at the end of August, very, very much. It was an opportunity to say a very heartfelt thank you to a lot of people in a very public way. And I, that was the best part of it for me, was being able to thank all of the people because I could be, you know, The most talented, best photographer in the world and the hardest working photographer in the world.
It wouldn’t matter. It really does take a much, much larger community to make it all work. I need the support of the people who I work for and the [01:02:00] people who I work with, the teams and the drivers and the mechanics. Certainly above all else, the fans, the people who support racing, who love racing and who love the cars.
Without them, there would be no racing and no cars. Go Corvette Racing. Go Cadillac Racing. I hope the race fans will continue to support those particular programs and as well the series that give them a venue to race in.
Crew Chief Eric: Richard Prince has been working as an automotive photographer since 1991 and has a wide range of experience.
Shooting product, motorsports events, and people. His clients include many of the world’s major automobile manufacturers and a diverse array of companies. And if you want to learn more or to check out some of his work, be sure to log onto www. rprincephoto. com or follow Richard on Instagram at RichardPrincePhoto.
And with that, Richard, I can’t thank you enough for coming on Break Fix and sharing your story with us. I have to say, you are the living example [01:03:00] of the reason why we tell people stop and listen to other people’s stories, especially when you’re at the racetrack. You never know what’s hiding behind, let’s say the lens or behind that ball cap or behind that t shirt.
All sorts of fascinating stories throughout the paddock and more importantly have to congratulate you again on all of your achievements.
Richard Prince: I appreciate that very much. I must thank you and as well your audience, everybody listening to this further to what I said about the Hall of Fame induction without the fans, without the enthusiasts, without this Massive swell of support for the cars we all love and for the racing that we love.
I would not have the blessings in this life that I have. And so I really do owe it all to you. Thank you very much.
Crew Chief Eric: And remember, always try to find the good in everything, right, Richard?
Richard Prince: Absolutely. There is good in everything and it’s a state of mind and it’s out there. Even the things you don’t really want to do, there’s some silver lining to [01:04:00] everything.
It is a beautiful way to live. I travel extensively. I’ve been to every state in the country and I’ve been to 30 some odd different countries and I’m still traveling constantly and I can say with absolute honesty I love the journey. I adore the destination and then I absolutely love coming home. If you can enjoy the journey, enjoy the destination, and love coming back home, you’ll lead a blessed life.
It’s a beautiful way to live.
Always look on the bright side of life. Always look on the light side of life.
If life seems jolly rotten, there’s something you’ve forgotten. And that’s to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
Crew Chief Eric: We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Brake Fix Podcast brought to you [01:05:00] by Grand Touring Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at GrandTouringMotorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article at GTMotorsports.
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Highlights
Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.
- 00:00 Introduction to Break/Fix Podcast
- 00:28 Meet Richard Prince: From Restoration to Photography
- 01:36 Early Influences and Passion for Cars
- 03:11 The Journey into Photography
- 04:11 Starting a Restoration Business
- 06:42 Transition to Professional Photography
- 13:38 Discovering a Legendary Corvette
- 21:38 The Birth of Corvette Racing
- 24:49 The Iconic Jake Logo
- 29:52 Life After Real Cars
- 32:22 Travels and Favorite Racetracks
- 34:21 The Thrill of Returning to Familiar Tracks
- 35:33 A Life-Changing Crash at VIR
- 36:43 The Immediate Aftermath and Medical Response
- 45:44 The Hospital Experience and Realizations
- 56:36 Reflections on Safety and Career Wisdom
- 59:44 What’s Next for Richard Prince?
- 01:00:51 Final Thoughts and Gratitude
Bonus Content
There's more to this story!
Be sure to check out the behind the scenes for this episode, filled with extras, bloopers, and other great moments not found in the final version. Become a Break/Fix VIP today by joining our Patreon.
All of our BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) Break/Fix episodes are raw and unedited, and expressly shared with the permission and consent of our guests.
Learn More
Richard Prince has been working as an automotive photographer since 1991 and has a wide range of experience shooting product, motorsports, events, and people. His clients include many of the world’s major automobile manufacturers and a diverse array of companies.
To learn more, or check out some of his work, be sure to logon to www.rprincephoto.com or follow Richard on Instagram @richardprincephoto
In August 2019, Richard was photographing an IMSA race at VIR when Katherine Legge’s NSX crashed at 156 mph. The steel barrier struck him in the torso, causing nine broken ribs, a shattered scapula, a collapsed lung, and internal bleeding. He lost vision in one eye, refused treatment at first, and underwent emergency surgery without anesthesia. “There’s no experience like staring down the abyss,” he said. “It dramatically increases your appreciation for life.”
Richard’s advice to aspiring motorsports photographers is clear: “It’s okay to take risks, but know where the line is.” Whether it’s dodging race cars or ticks in the woods at Lime Rock, he urges photographers to balance passion with safety. “We all want to go home to the ones we love.”
With five books under his belt – including a new C8 Corvette title – Richard continues to shoot for Cadillac, Chevrolet, and editorial outlets like Hemmings. He’s still traveling the world, still chasing the perfect shot, and still helping his son with car projects at home. His mantra? “Find happiness in everything.”
Richard’s induction into the Corvette Hall of Fame is more than a personal milestone – it’s a tribute to the fans, teams, and enthusiasts who made his journey possible. “Without them, there would be no racing and no cars,” he said. “I owe it all to you.”
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The symposium is named in honor of Michael R. Argetsinger (1944-2015), an award-winning motorsports author and longtime member of the Center's Governing Council. Michael's work on motorsports includes:
