A Brief History of FLAT TRAK FOTOS:

Kathy and Dave shot pictures “locally” for several years before officially establishing Flat Trak Fotos in 1982. Their early years were spent covering the Illinois, Iowa and Missouri areas, along with a few long distance trips (like Daytona and Sturgis). We now cover all the AMA Grand Nationals and as many other dirt track races as possible.

Flat Trak Fotos has always been a family venture. For years we pulled our little “cart”, loaded with our picture books, around the pits selling pictures to the riders and their families. Early on, we were helped by our son Lance, but high school activities and then college pulled him away. He now lives in Maine with his wife Diane and two children, Ethan & Ella. In 1986 Kathy started working for the AMA (sign up & scoring). Kathy's job changed in 1992 when she started running the computer that generates entry lists and line-ups, with sponsor information, for the announcers along with results and press releases for all the teams and press immediately after each race. When the AMA's web site was formed, Kathy uploaded each race results to the web site as the races were run. For two years she mainly worked the Nationals East of the Rockies, but in 1994 she started to do all of the Grand Nationals and has not missed a race since. This leaves the photography, photo-journalism and web site up to Dave, but Kathy still runs the office.

When our daughter Danielle was old enough, she also started to help, but after a few years she followed Kathy over to the AMA. Danielle and her daughter Mackenzie have now moved to Lake Ozark Missouri. Danielle and her boyfriend Matt Dayringer work for the AMA at all of the Grand National races.

In the early years we shot black and white, but started to experiment with color in 1983. We continued to shoot black & white (for Cycle News) until the mid 90’s, when Cycle News was able to switch over to color negatives and then to an all color format. The biggest change for us came in 2002 as Dave started the switch to digital photography. Dave shot negative and digital the first year before going all digital in 2003.

The digital change led to work on the AMA’s web site, 1800flatrack.com (now known as amaflattrack.com). Dave has provided action pictures and a recap of every Grand National since 2002. Over the years Dave has been published in Cycle News, Cycle, Cycle World, American Motorcyclist, Road Racer X, Motorcyclist, Flat Track Illustrated and others.

Since 1994 we have attended all of the Grand Nationals, most of the “600 Nationals”, many of the “Hot Shoe Nationals” and a large number of Amateur races including many of the “AMA Amateur Nationals”. Entering 2008 we have worked 268 straight Grand Nationals and since 1982 we have covered over 950 dirt track races.

In 2004 our web site flattrakfotos.com replaced the trusty old cart and books, the riders, families and fans are still the heart of our business. The web site was designed and has always been maintained by Dave.