TONY HAMMETT: A CHAT WITH MR. RETRO

“I’ve become Mr. Retro, I guess, for anybody that wants stuff from the past. So, I’m a good source for that.” A perfect understatement from Tony Hammett, who has been taking photographs at the dirt tracks for almost 40 years. During that time, his pictures have been seen in many publications, and he has been a fixture at various dirt racing events, including a time as the series photographer on the Hav-A-Tampa Dirt Racing tour. He also was a primary figure in helping establish the photo collection at the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame in Walton, Kentucky. In 2018 he was inducted into the NDLMHOF as a Contributor to the Sport. He currently lives in Laurens, South Carolina. and recently sat down to share memories of his earlier days working in the motorsports world and chat about the current state of the media and racing. 

Dirt Empire: First off, aside from print publications like Dirt Empire, where do you get your work out these days? 

Tony Hammett: I mainly just do it on Facebook for a gentleman named Al Lewis that I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting. He maintains several vintage pages and I just put stuff on there to help him out, get him some traffic and try to share memories of what racing used to be like. And I enjoy going back, looking at and seeing the stuff I’ve forgotten about.

DE: Which tracks did you start shooting pictures at?

TH: The first race I ever tried to shoot at was the National 100 in East Alabama in 1985. All the guys that I saw when I was a kid at my home track and all my heroes who were from Georgia basically, and many of them were already retired. I don’t have any of those guys that I have shot and I decided that I did not want that to continue. And if I’d had a camera in the 1970s, I would have probably gone broke or made my parents go broke.

DE: What were some of those names?

TH: Bud Lunsford, Charlie Hughes, Leon Archer, Charlie Mincey, Doug Kenimer, Leon Sells, Charles Barrett and the Pritchett Brothers, C.L. and Harold, just all those legends down in Georgia. I think they’re the greatest compilation of drivers that has ever been.

DE: What different types of cameras have you used, and do you have any favorites?

TH: I started out with a Canon AE-1 Program, which was a good camera at the time, but it would be like a dinosaur now. I used Minolta cameras after that and I finally I gave in and went to the digital revolution in 2004 and I’ve had Nikon since then.

DE: As far as cars you’ve photographed in any division, from an artistic standpoint, were there any colors that you felt were good that stood out? Or any colors that were harder to capture at night?

TH: I’ve always been partial to gold and black cars. But yellow and orange race cars on the racetrack are beautiful, in my opinion. They always stand out. All the reflective decals and stuff, I’ve cursed those since they came out. It makes it hard. I always used a flash, and that made it awfully hard to get the settings where it wouldn’t blow the entire car out, or else you couldn’t tell a thing about it.

DE: Even on uniforms, too. Like when Scott Bloomquist won at Cherokee Speedway once and he had that piping with the reflective material. 

TH: It’s a nightmare. But the funny thing is, they always thought it made it look so good on T.V. But it actually made it a hundred times worse, trying to tell what they were.

DE: Again, you were the main photographer for Hav-A-Tampa. You also did the S.T.A.R.S series. Anything to say about working with Jimmy Mosteller and Mike Swims and the UDTRA and Hav-A-Tampa?

TH: In my opinion, Mike Swims was the greatest promotional mind ever in dirt racing. He’s the main reason the Bristol race happened. It was such a phenomenal success. Mr. Mosteller was an awesome man and an awesome announcer. He used his influence with the cigar company to get people involved and once they were involved his personality was second to none. He was just very charismatic and those two working together—Hav-A-Tampa was the series as far as I was concerned—not because I worked for them, but they were just advanced more than anybody else. The S.T.A.R.S were more regional. The Hav-A-Tampa was really the first national tour.

DE: As far as favorite tracks are concerned, are there any you’ve especially liked to shoot at? There are different styles, like you think of Volunteer Speedway at Bulls Gap, Tennessee, with all the banking. Do you learn over time where to put yourself to get good shots?

TH: Yeah, I was sometimes looked at as “Mr. Don’t Talk To Me When I’m Shooting,” but I really wasn’t that way. I just tried to get away from people, not stand where everybody else did, try and do something different. My all-time favorite was West Plains Motor Speedway in Missouri. That racing there could not be touched by anything I’ve seen anywhere else. Three-wide was a given and four-wide almost was. Just super amazing. The Gibsons had such a first-class facility. It was just unreal.

DE: Today people know series like the World of Outlaws and Lucas Oil—but was Hav-A-Tampa still your favorite?

TH: Yeah, naturally Hav-A-Tampa, because I was their series photographer. I loved the S.T.A.R.S tour; that’s really where I got started. Doc Dixon and Bret Emrick were just super nice to work with. It was crazy. People would give me a hard time about driving up—they would go to Ohio or the Northeast–to go to races when there was plenty around here. They were just nice and some of my photographer friends were frequent visitors on that tour, so I learned a lot from them. So, it was easy for me to make that drive up there.

DE: That’s cool. And were you partial to any other type of racing? You were known for doing the late models but were there any other classes you may have enjoyed as well?

TH: I didn’t do a lot of NASCAR, but I really enjoyed the old Busch Grand Nationals. I got to shoot people like Tommy Houston, Jack Ingram, Bob Pressley—people like that, that I really enjoyed watching race. It sounds crazy from me being from where I’m at, but I loved Northeastern Modifieds almost as good as anything. Those things always fascinated me, and I love pavement modifieds. They’re the most wicked race machines on the planet as far as I’m concerned. I got to see them at Martinsville and shoot them there one time. I shot them at Greenville-Pickens and Caraway and a few other places. If I wasn’t a dirt late model guy, I would be a pavement modified guy.

DE: Did you have any photographers you learned from early on?

TH: Yeah. The early years it was definitely W.H. Barney, that’s an alter ego of him, that’s not really his name–I won’t give his real name. Gary Shrey, Steve Crumbacher, Jim Butler, just a lot of people. The guy that I try to emulate, and I still think is the best ever—and I’m not trying to hurt anybody’s feelings– is Dave Olson. He’s the man, as far as I’m concerned. Dave has always been an independent guy. He has his own studio. He’s shot every series there is. He’s been at it for over 40 years. He gave me a break one time, jumping in to do the Hav-A-Tampa cards, the old trading cards they used to do. There’s plenty of good ones out there and I hate to name one, but that guy’s phenomenal. He lives in Wisconsin. I think he lives in Pewaukee or pretty close to that. But he’s still going at it. His stuff can’t be touched by anybody as far as I’m concerned. [Dave is with Studio 360]

DE:  I don’t know how you feel about this as a photographer and journalist, but I think people could complement each other more often for their different contributions. Sometimes people are very competitive.

TH: I hate to pick on the current generation, but the competition now is much more based on “Look at me,” really, instead of “Let’s try to help one another.” When I started, sure, we were competitive, because we’re all trying to get stuff in magazines and then there were the trade shows and stuff. But if somebody had a problem, you helped them out. When I was first learning, we were always picking each other up if we were having a bad night. We had more camaraderie than I think there is now. It’s just super, super competitive now. There was plenty of outlets back when I was shooting; now there’s very few. There’s the online type of stuff, so everybody’s competing for even a smaller piece of the pie now than we did back them.

DE: And there used to be newspapers or racing journals that were published in the next week or month. Now at times there seems to be this thought that if it’s not online the fastest, it’s not as important.

TH: That’s true. You have got to be the quickest. You don’t have to be the best. You got to get it out there first. Everybody wants  instant satisfaction or instant gratification, I should say. If you want to do it justice, I don’t think you should limit yourself all the time if you’re really intent on putting out a quality product. I think, take as long as it takes.

DE: There was an article in Autoweek by Mike Hembree that I didn’t see until recently. But it was about North Wilkesboro Speedway and worth reading even if it was from a year ago.

TH: Well, you know, good writers can make anything timeless. And I think that’s the attribute of being a good writer. They can take something that happened ten years ago, and they can still catch your attention and wow you with it.

DE: Over the years, you’ve had so much experience at various tracks and on tours, like Hav-A-Tampa. You also have known many veterans in the sport. You shot the first Eldora Million, which was won by Donnie Moran. You kind of told me a story about that and when he collected his winnings. Can you talk about that?

TH: Yeah, Donnie came over to go upstairs and get paid. They always said this thing about Earl paying him cash, but he didn’t for the Million. He actually wrote out a check. And I don’t know what Donnie was thinking, but he came up there by himself, and he had a check for a million bucks in his pocket, minus whatever the revenue people took. He asked me if I would walk back over to his hauler with him. And I said, “Sure, yes, I would be glad to.” I think his sister Rhonda and his brother-in-law David did make it over, now that I think about it more. I’ve known Donnie since 1982; we’ve always been good friends. One time when he won the World 100, he did that with all the cash, walking back to his hauler with that too. Funny–walking around with over thirty thousand dollars in a brown paper bag. And he asked me to walk back with him because nobody came up to the tower with him.

DE: Weren’t the tax guys there to collect their portion?

TH: Yeah, they had agents sitting there waiting on him after the Million.

DE: You have pictures of Devin Moran when he was a little kid, playing in the dirt, as well as Savanna and other family members?

TH: Yeah, Devin. I’ve got a picture of him all dirtied up playing on his “dirt track” he made at Cherokee, and I actually sent it to Brenda here lately. I’ve got a picture of Savanna standing in the museum at Florence looking at her dad’s picture and she can’t be more than two feet tall. She was just a little bitty thing. I’ve got pictures of all of them. Brodie, Tristin, Devin, Wylie and Savanna. I’ve just been close to that family for a lot of years. They were my first real touring family away from home.

DE: Anybody you wished you could have photographed that maybe you didn’t?

TH: I wish I’d have gotten into it sooner. People think I’ve been at this for a hundred years, but I didn’t really start shooting until 1991 for a publication. I started in 1985 just walking around the pits and stuff.