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By Betsy Burke Parker

Photos by Douglas Lees except where noted

Award-winning photographer Douglas Lees has a photographic memory.

He’s renowned for the kind of instant recall that makes him able to spout decades-old steeplechase trivia, NFL roster minutia and vivid details from foxhunts conducted last week as much as six decades ago. For someone who’s made a career out of stopping the action with the snap of the shutter, Lees (©Betsy Manierre) has become an expert at freezing moments in time.

Lees has been a regular on the Virginia point-to-point circuit and at the Virginia and Maryland stops on the National Steeplechase Association circuit since the mid-1960s. The Warrenton, Virginia native inherited the penchant for photography and foxhunting, and an appreciation of the artistic side of steeplechasing early, from both his parents, the late Harcourt and Scottie Lees. (below, Scottie and Harcourt Lees dancing at the 1968 Warrenton Hunt Ball)

Lees says they fueled his early passion for recording history on film, cracking the code of shutter speed plus aperture plus film sensitivity overlaid with style and balance.

“I have to credit them for my interest,” he says. “Both of them were always taking pictures. There were always cameras in the house, and they taught me how to develop (black-and-white) film. Sometimes they developed pictures right there on the kitchen table, but they also had a darkroom.

“My parents were also the first (to do) editorial review of my pictures. Their support was crucial.”

Lees especially admired Winants’ use of telephoto lenses to compress distance for vivid, larger than life images, and adopted, and adapted, it as soon as he began collecting his own cameras and lenses. “He told me to buy the best equipment I could. It allows you to reach way out and capture the scenes that others don’t see.”

Lees started with Minolta, but moved to Nikon. Nikon remains his camera body of choice.

“Peter gave me such a wealth of advice in addition to teaching me about the equipment,” Lees says. “He told me if the pictures aren’t good, you’re not close enough. You want a big impact. That means a big lens.” Lees says the notion of a photographer "being close enough" always reminded him of war photographer Robert Capa. "He didn't have the telephotos we have now," says Lees, turning briefly to the macabre he occasionally embraces. "But his photos always got close. Too close when he stepped on a landmine in 1954 French Indo-China."

Shot with a Nikkor 105mm, Lees' photo of Redmond Stewart's Maryland Hunt Cup winner Haffaday falling at the second-last in the 1970 Virginia Gold Cup was picked up by the AP and appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Lees soon became part of the photographer fraternity, an elite corps that included names he says were his idols. “This was the era when not only Peter Winants but Skip Ball, Neena Ewing and Cappy Jackson were shooting for the Maryland Horse,” he says. “I felt I was in pretty good company when I got my first (Maryland Horse) cover.”

Away from jump racing, Lees photographs – and embraces – fly fishing, both participating and photographing (©Levin O'Connor), and foxhunting, participating through his 20s but today just photographing.

“They’re seasonal,” he says of his three chosen sports. Retired from a career in insurance, Lees is a pretty serious athlete, swimming regularly and lifting weights. He takes his fitness as seriously as his photography, taking the saying “use it or lose it” to heart.

“I like the point-to-point circuit being ahead of the sanctioned races,” Lees explains, the double-Eclipse Award winner admitting to recurring pre-season jitters each year. “I have to get my timing back, get my equipment organized.” He’s a real character, and seems larger than life, having had images published in almost every horse magazine in the nation, and having won every major equestrian photo prize in America, But Lees remains famously humble and approachable. “I don’t mind sharing how to do things” with a camera, he says. “That’s how I got started myself.”

Born: Feb. 12, 1950

Hometown: Warrenton, Virginia

Family: Father Harcourt Lees (former Warrenton Hunt master; Virginia Gold Cup committee for 50 years), mother Scottie Lees (master and huntsman, Ashland Bassets 1970-1980; presented the Virginia Gold Cup 1968-1977)

Education: Blue Ridge School (near Charlottesville), University of Richmond (1972 grad, degree in journalism and English)

Eclipse Awards: 1978 and 2007, plus three honorable mentions. He’s one of just eight to win more than one.

S. Bryce Wing Award: 2014, presented by the Maryland Hunt Cup Association for his “dedication to the historic race.” Lees has photographed 51 Maryland Hunt Cups, and has shot the Virginia Gold Cup since 1968.

Photo awards: Chronicle of the Horse photo of the year four times; American Horse Publications 10 photo awards

Books: Lees’ work has appeared in magazines and newspapers around the world, and his photos are featured in Margaret Worrall’s “100 Runnings of the Maryland Hunt Cup,” Bill Myzk’s “The History and Origins of the Virginia Gold Cup,” and Peter Winants’ “Steeplechasing: A Complete History of the Sport in North America,” among others.

He was 17.

“It was a miserable, terribly cold Saturday” at the Warrenton Hunt Point-to-Point, he recalls, formerly run on the old Broadview course near downtown that also hosted the Virginia Gold Cup.

“There was a loose horse (Perry's Imp) running on the course, and it went back up the stretch the wrong way. I caught a shot of Willie McCormick (then a young amateur jockey, today a veterinarian and an NSA advisor) on Irish Dash passing with the field. It was pretty hairy.”

The old Broadview course in Warrenton. “I remember going to the course on Friday night before the races .The committee would have a big party on Friday, but I’d skip the party and go out to the course with a sickle to trim the grass in front of the fence I knew I’d want to shoot.”

Foxfield, Sept. 9, 1978, which won him his first Eclipse.

“Runner-up would be a really good remote I got at Fair Hill in 1976. It was on a color slide, in the old days when remotes were really hard to set up and capture. There were four horses landing, brush flying.”

“I loved black and white, and I loved processing my own photos, but finally in 2005, I went all color, all digital. I had my darkroom in a building (my father and I) owned in downtown Warrenton, and I sold it that year, darkroom and everything. I just didn’t want to do the chemicals any more, and digital really moves up the game.” (Pictured - First fence of the 1981 Virginia Gold Cup, Broadview racecourse)

1947 Orvis bamboo flyrod. “My grandfather was a fisherman. My father wasn’t that keen on the fishing, but when I was 12, he took me fishing on the Rappahannock (River) below Kelly’s Ford and was teaching me to flycast with my grandfather’s bamboo rods.

“I still have those, and use them. I was just casting one of those just the other day, a 1947 bamboo rod, and I contacted Orvis to tell them it’s still going strong.”

Letort Spring Run, Carlisle, Pa. (pictured, ©Harrison O'Connor) and the Yellow Breeches, Boiling Springs, Pa. as well as the Shenandoah River.

“Anywhere the fish are biting.”

Brown trout. “That was the name of my Virtual Stable, you know, when Steeplechase Times used to have a Pick 6 contest. I won it in 2011 (with) Decoy Daddy and Incomplete in my fantasy stable. Incomplete won the International Gold Cup and locked it in for me.”

Skip Ball, Cappy Jackson, Peter Winants. “They’re unbelievable. These days, Tod Marks of course. He’s helped me a lot with the remotes. I always learn something shooting with him at the races.”

NYRA photographer Bob Coglianese, “The Savage” from the 1980 Tremont Stakes at Belmont Park.

Foxhunting. “It’s chaotic. After they move off, it’s like you’re a G-man driving around trying to find them.” (Pictured: Piedmont Fox Hounds, Warrenton Hunt joint meet in Piedmont territory 1973)

December 31, 1981, New Year’s Eve meet with the Old Dominion Hounds. “I was right up behind Zeke Ferguson (former ODH joint-master and owner of Leeds Don, that in 1967 retired the Virginia Gold Cup with three wins.)

“We came in in the snow. (Huntsman) Jim Atkins put his (pink) coat over a barbed wire fence for us to jump. We were two hours blank before we hit, got almost to Leeds Church (nearly seven miles from the meet.) It was a wild day.”

Nikon camera body. Nikkor 200-500 f5.6 for flat races and foxhunting, Nikkor 70-200 f2.8 for speed. Fisheye 16-35mm for remotes.

“One day at Montpelier, I had my remote camera set up but caught the best photo of a stupid fan who jumped under a (natural hedge) fence during the race. They didn’t used to worry much about crowd control.”

Jackie Kennedy, Paddy Neilson, Charlie Fenwick. “Those guys were the NFL quarterbacks of their day when they were racing."

Tune into the NSA Network at nationalsteeplechase.com at 12:00 PM ET on Saturday, October 24th to watch the races live!