Forty Years of Photo Finish
Donald Morehouse peers out of his window at the filling starting gate below. A small plaque on the outside of his door reads “PHOTO FINISH.” Don, a graying man in his mid-60s with a lisp, has worked as a photo finish technician for 40 years. His tiny storage closet of an office, perched high above Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens, is filled with the hum of electronics.
Four cameras, stacked opposite a six-inch-wide floor-to-ceiling metal door on the trackside wall, point straight at the finish line. Unlike a traditional camera, these cameras' shutters are always open, recording only the motion across the three-inch section of track at the finish line. The camera works like any other, just without a shutter, so the exposure time is continuous. When a horse in motion passes the lens, it is recorded through time. A fast horse appears normally, while a slow one becomes elongated. A horse's rear leg often appears as a “rubber leg,” distorted and long, having crossed the lens slower than the rest of its body.
Next to the cameras stands a chest-high timing machine. Each of the four automatic timers corresponds to one of four invisible beams spanning the track. When a horse crosses the track at each of the specific intervals, the signal is tripped and the timing machine automatically records the horse’s time for that distance.
As the race is set to begin, Don takes his place in front of the timer, watching out the window, and flips a few switches to warm up the beams. The gate opens, the horses take off. His day begins.
You don’t have the luxury of picking up the phone, “Oh I’m sick today I can’t come in.” I think I might’ve been sick where I couldn’t go to work probably once or twice in 40 years. There’s nobody that’s going to be qualified to do your job, so you gotta take a nurse with you—it’s happened, the operators have had nurses in the room while they’re working. I’ve laid out flat on the floor in between races. Didn’t feel good, just got up, shot the race, did it, and back down again. You have to do what you have to do and get the work done.
When I’d just first come in the area, I was working Yonkers, this was back in December ’84, and I had a bad cold, oh it was terrible. I was taking medication and I was working the Yonkers raceway—we were still using the film cameras then, and it was like 110 in there. And I fell asleep with the medication I was taking and I missed the race. And they’re hollering up on the intercom, “Yo, Don Don Don!”
I woke up and the horses were going through the wire. Anyways, fortunately for me the placing judges who were there knew me from working up in Saratoga and knew that I wasn’t a goof off—I’m a very serious person—and under the circumstances, “Okay, get back upstairs, no problem.”
I started at Saratoga harness track back in the mid-‘60s. The fella became ill back in late ‘69 or so, and they needed someone to fill in for him while he was recovering. I worked part time for a year or so and then full time after that, and I haven’t stopped since.
You know probably I should leave, who knows—move on and let a younger guy take over. But I’m not in any hurry, what am I gonna do? Go to a local Elks club? Hoist a cocktail flag at 4 o’clock every afternoon after I come off the golf course? Then play cards at night? I mean there’s plenty of things to keep you busy but you have to be on the go all the time, have an incentive to get up and put your feet on the floor in the morning, get out of bed and do something. And when you don’t have that in you, you just… so many people I’ve seen, a year or so after they retire, they’re six feet in the ground. The old saying, “’long as you enjoy what you’re doing, that’s the important thing, you keep doing it.” I’m the only one in the family here. I chose to leave my family in Saratoga, and I go back every couple weeks. ‘Long as I’m happy that’s all, I guess that’s the main thing—keep dad happy, keep ‘im working. You have to have an understanding wife in this business—there’s a lot of divorce. I’m married 47 years. I’ve always said your job comes first and then the family. People think I’m crazy for thinking that but without a job, how can you support your family?
At Churchill we had a guy, oh he was nervous! He’d lock the door, wouldn’t let anybody in. I’ve always had an open door policy, meaning that up until just until a year ago, I used to have chili on Belmont day. I’d bring a pot of chili in and leave the door open—people can come in and out, grab what they want, be talking, and I’d be doing my work. He’d lock the door, “get out, don’t come in!” so nervous at the big race. You have to have somewhat of a relaxed attitude doing this. You can’t be all uptight.
I’ve done the Belmonts, I’ve done the Breeder’s Cup. This is my famous quote: a $2000 claimer is just the same as a $10 million race. You don’t do any different. You time, the horses still cross the wire. I don’t get excited. The only time I look at my program is to look at what course I’m supposed to be on and the distance of the race. But I don’t get excited over big races; they’re all the same.
It’s good and it’s bad, racing is. It generates a lot of income for a lot of people, and you have the chance to lose an income, if you don’t know what you’re doing. There’s nothing wrong with betting on horses—it’s human nature to gamble. You go to the track and say ‘I got $50 to lose and that’s it,’ then no harm done. You go in and play a couple of races and you go out broke, or you have some money for beer afterwards. That’s the way it should be done.
If you want to get involved in it, you can absorb a lot. But I have a tendency to don’t pay attention to a lot of stuff. I don’t have a lot of a brain to work with, I figure, and I say why load it, why fill it up with useless information that you really don’t need. So I just come in here, do my job, read my paper and stuff, watch my sport, and I’m happy.
This used to be a mini darkroom. Before, we used to have film cameras, and we had to change the lenses, unscrew ‘em, put another lens on, refocus the camera. Up and down every race. So we’d shoot the race and rip out a piece of film, about 15 inches long, and it takes 15 seconds to develop. Project it to the placing judges next door, and they would make the decision, the order of finish. Then I had to come back and make a print for the public. It was time consuming. Now it’s the same technique but just a different system.
We work together, the judges, I’m their seeing eye dog. They depend a lot on the cameras. Once in a while you might have a power failure, and then I’ll holler up, that you’re on your own. Then I hope that there’s nine horses on the wire at the same time, just to see what they’re gonna do.
--Kate Hanselman was the Editor in Chief of the New School Free Press, and will graduate from Eugene Lang College this May with a major in journalism. Her senior work focuses on the Aquaduct race track in Queens.