{"id":62366,"date":"2022-03-09T12:34:08","date_gmt":"2022-03-09T17:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.themainemag.com\/?p=62366"},"modified":"2022-03-09T12:34:10","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T17:34:10","slug":"the-life-of-a-mudding-photographer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themainemag.com\/the-life-of-a-mudding-photographer\/","title":{"rendered":"The Life of a Mudding Photographer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Every June through September, photographer Brooke Adams spends one weekend a month covered in high-visibility gear and a thick layer of mud while huge rigs, frequently made of parts taken piecemeal from other vehicles (think: a Toyota Tacoma body with the engine of a Chevrolet) roar past her, sometimes mere feet away. \u201cI\u2019ve gotten really good at timing the wave of mud that comes when they go by,\u201d says Adams, \u201cso that I can duck and cover to protect my camera equipment.\u201d For the past eight years Adams and videographer Ann Steene\u2014the two-woman team behind Twisted Sprocket Studio\u2014have worked as the official track photographers of Northwoods Mud Run, a four-part mudding series based in Avon, a small Franklin County town that includes part of Mount Blue State Park. In that time, they\u2019ve mastered the art of running to get the best shot (or to get out of the way) of custom-built trucks, Jeeps, and four-wheelers blasting through dirt and mud while a packed crowd of cheering spectators looks on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The premise of mudding, or mud racing, is relatively simple: drivers in a variety of high clearance vehicles plow through mud as quickly as they can. The types of cars, engines, and tires (or, as they say in the mudding world, \u201cboggers\u201d) vary, and drivers can either race the \u201cdeep mud,\u201d slogging through a four-foot-deep mud pit, \u201cfast track,\u201d a timed race on a dirt track, or, for the monster trucks, the obstacle course, which involves launching off a series of jumps to try to travel the farthest, much like the long jump in track and field. Unlike many high-adrenaline sports, however, there are rarely shoe-in winners in mud racing. \u201cIt all depends on the mud,\u201d says Kerri Phillips, who runs Northwoods with her husband, Cecil, and who has been mud racing for 30 years. Depending on the dirt-to-water ratio or the point in the day that a race takes place, the consistency of the mud may be more slick or tacky, making it either easier or harder to blast through. This in turn makes every race a toss-up, and thus all the more exciting. \u201cYou really never know who is going to win.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    This ever-changing essence of mud is what got Adams hooked on photographing it. As a child growing up in East Waterboro, she was mesmerized by the textures of the natural world that she could capture with her mother\u2019s Polaroid. \u201cI was always taking that camera and sneaking off into the woods to take pictures, and as I got older, any time I was out in nature I was taking stills in my mind.\u201d That passion led her to become a fine-art photographer and an artist mentor at Spindleworks, an art center and gallery for adults with disabilities in Brunswick. It was through the Independence Association\u2014an umbrella company of Spindleworks\u2014that she met Steene, and the two became fast friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\t\t

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