Treasure trove: Race Images and Peter Rubery's lifetime of photo finishes
SPORTS COMMENT: Peter Rubery is sitting on a horse-racing treasure trove in Feilding.
His Race Images business has photographs dating back six decades and he's still getting requests for framed pictures of winning horses from way back.
He has New Zealand's largest repository of racing photos, from negatives to today's digital archive, including every winner in Central Districts since 1960 and from the northern area since 1978.
As other photographers bow out, Rubery has bought their collections, the most recent six months ago. Sadly, a few collections were taken to the tip before he could get to them.
He and fellow photographer Grant Matthew are trackside twice a week around Central Districts, the fun part of the job.
Their biggest buzz comes on race days, sharing the wins with excited owners who invariably want the photos of their horse passing the post.
He employs contract photographers to cover every meeting in the country, three from Waikato north and three more across South Island gallops and harness meetings.
But the archive ensures the success of the business. Just give Rubery a horse's name and he will unearth it.
It has been his life. Marton born and bred, his father was a tote mechanic and young Rubery was a runner for him on race days returning incorrect betting tickets.
His career began as a school holiday job catching the workers' bus to Palmerston North to work with racing photographer Ken Lush whose father Pat had set up betting tip sheets in the late 1950s.
Rubery was 17 when Lush asked him to stay on, so at the end of 1982 he left Rangitīkei College to process black-and-white film in the darkroom.
In the early 80s when racing was booming, there were more horses than races, and it was difficult to get a start, let alone a win. People took shares in horse syndicates and many farmers had a couple of broodmares, until the 1987 sharemarket crash.
Lush put Rubery through his photographic apprenticeship, taught him colour photography and the art of framing, hand-cutting cardboard mounts which they are still doing.
Rubery was manager of the company by 1986, having graduated from darkroom to photographer to eventually company owner in 1991 when he had to build it back up.
He shifted it from Palmerston North to Feilding in 2012.
There were once four such businesses in the North Island. He would send pictures to the Friday Flash and dashing to get prints on the Newman's bus to Wellington in time to meet newspaper deadlines.
In those days everything was manual and expensive, big heavy cameras, no light meters and a roll of film took only 10 pictures.
There was time for only one shot at the winning post; no time to wind the film through again. The art was in choosing when to push the button and sometimes the film jammed.
Now the digital cameras shoot 12 frames a second.
Big teams of photographers were necessary because there were so many meetings. Rubery estimates he has travelled about 1.5 million kilometres and has only ever owned Toyotas, driving them until each had 400,000 kilometres on the clock.
The mileage has dropped with many racing clubs having moved to bigger centres. In the past three years, the Stratford, Wairoa, Gisborne and Waipukurau courses have closed.
Rubery and his colleagues can boast having snapped many of the greats, from La Mer to Bonecrusher, Kiwi, Sunline and Melody Bell whose montage is in pride of place in his office.
Rubery has missed only one Wellington Cup meeting in 40 years.
He really enjoys researching winners for people. Recently, one woman, whose father's horse had won the Wairarapa Breeders' Stakes, called to see the winning photo. Up came a gent in a fine suit and beside him was a young girl; it was the woman who was making the request.
The photographers also look forward to seeing horses have their first starts, photographing them and chatting to the proud owners.
Race Images also supply New Zealand Thoroughbred Marketing who dispense articles to newspapers, most of which have dispensed with racing desks.
Some photos have been sold to adorn postage stamps.
One of the biggest changes was the advent of computers in the 1990s. Information was previously added to photographs by typewriters.
In 2004, along came the digital age which enabled more pictures to be taken and a better product. With that came email which is now the go-to method for transmitting photos, beating the old Newman's bus.
Filing negatives from yesteryear means marrying them to details from old race books and cuttings of results from newspapers. Rubery has become a dab hand at reading negatives.
Where once there was a travelling press community, now press rooms are either gone or empty. At 57, Rubery is often the sole inhabitant and he isn't going anywhere.
