Lifelong NASCAR photographer T. Taylor Warren passes

By SceneDaily Staff

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Photographer T. Taylor Warren.

Dale Barbee
NASCAR Scene

RSS Feed
Email to a Friend
Increase Text Size Decrease Text Size RESIZE
Share
- Facebook
- Del.icio.us
- DIGG This
- Reddit
- Newsvine
- Stumbeupon
0 Comments

Thomas Taylor Warren, a lifelong NASCAR photographer, died Wednesday. He was 83.

Known simply as T. Taylor in the NASCAR community, T. Taylor Warren began photographing racing before NASCAR itself was born. Warren started shooting Sprint and Midget racing at the Milwaukee Fairgrounds in 1947 when he lived in Wisconsin, where he found out that if he took prints of his photos back to the track, he could sign himself in to the races, according to a bio from the National Motorsports Press Association.

Warren shot Indy cars, Sprints, Midgets and Roadsters in the Milwaukee and Chicago areas, including events at the legendary Soldier Field. After he moved to High Point N.C., he started shooting NASCAR events while maintaining his full-time job at a local photo studio.

Over the next 60 years, Warren saw, and shot, it all. From his photo of the three-wide finish of the first Daytona 500 in 1959, taken with a 4x5 Grafix film camera, to images from this year’s 50th anniversary Daytona 500 that he shot with a digital camera, Warren rolled with the changes in NASCAR and kept on going.

Always easy to spot in the yellow outfits that he wore to the track, he has been called NASCAR's most famous photographer. But in his own modest words, Warren always said, "I've just been at it so long they can't get rid of me."

Warren was the first photographer to win the International Motorsports Hall of Fame's Henry T. McLemore Award for achievement in journalism, an honor presented to him in 2006.

in lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), P.O. Box 500, Darlington, SC 29540.

Funeral arrangements have not been released.