MORNINGS AT CHURCHILL | A photo album of Kentucky Derby training | Sports

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- One thing I've learned over the years is that the older you get, the earlier you wake up. At least, that's true for me. I used to be lucky to get to Churchill Downs by 7 a.m.

These days, I hardly feel like it's worth my while unless I get there before sunrise. That's when the best pictures happen. I've only been really trying to take decent pictures for the past five or six years. I'll let you know when I get there.

One of the gifts of covering the Kentucky Derby for a young reporter was knowing that some of the best writers in the country were going to show up. Jim Murray or Dave Anderson or Bill Nack or any number of guys who could really tell a story and were at the top of their game. (By the way, of all of them, Rick Bozich has written as many great Derby stories as any. And probably more.)

For me, it wasn't a matter of trying to measure up to those guys, because I wasn't going to. But it was a chance to see how they looked at the race, how they approached stories, heck, just how they worked.

These days, I don't know if sports columnists hold that kind of regard. And even those that do rarely come to the Derby, unless it's a Pat Forde, who loves the event and lives here. There are a few others.

But more than those are photographers. And since I've been trying to learn to take some pictures here and there, to watch these men and women work has been the same kind of education. Pat McDonough, formerly of The Courier Journal, or Dan Dry, formerly of everywhere in the world, any of The CJ's current photography staff, Mike Clevenger and Matt Stone and that whole group. Churchill's stable of photographers. Barbara Livingston of The Daily Racing Form. And others who will be in town soon. I shouldn't start naming people because I'll leave too many out.

Anyway, in this time when people are less likely to give you five minutes of their time to read a story that you pour yourself into, they are more conditioned to look at images that you're able to create. People asked me why I started taking pictures, and I started taking them because I needed photos to help tell the stories I was trying to write. And, in 2018, I suffered a stroke, and my brain started working differently. And it grew out of that.

I tend to look at things more in pictures now and even to write in images more than I did. I am moved emotionally more by what I see than what I hear. I tend to react with far more emotion than I ever did, even can be moved to tears in ways I never was. But if I close my eyes, the emotion subsides.

The brain is a strange thing. Anyway, without going into too many more words, the following is what I've seen in my morning walks around the Churchill Downs stables the past couple of weeks. We all see different things. The fun in this is learning to look for new things. For those who have encouraged me along the way, I continue to be grateful.