Bruno Cannatelli turned down a lucrative job offer 10 years ago to indulge his passion for racing photography and is now one of the country’s leading thoroughbred racing lensmen.Left Bruno Cannatelli calls the racetrack home and has travelled across Australia and overseas to photograph the world’s best horses and biggest races.By Brad Kingsbury
THOSE who have turned to the racing pages of a newspaper or magazine in the past 25 years would no doubt have seen the work of Dandenong’s Bruno Cannatelli.
Bruno, 49, is one of the country’s leading freelance racing photographers and has spent a lifetime pursuing his passion for capturing a mix of emotions ranging from ecstasy to tragedy that is the essence of the ‘Sport of Kings’.
While his equine pictures are held in the highest regard by thoroughbred racing enthusiasts, his name is also well known in the fashion industry and, had money been his motivation, snapping horseflesh would still be just a hobby.
He came to Australia as a six-year-old from Italy with his family in 1962 and spent six months in Dandenong before growing up in Port Melbourne over the next 15 years.
He shifted to Noble Park in 1975 and then with new wife Maria moved to Dandenong in 1982, where they have lived ever since, raising their three children Steven, Mark and Lisa.
“The first race I ever saw on TV was the 1966 Melbourne Cup when Rain Lover ran away with it. I had my first 50-cent bet on a horse called Captain Hayes in 1969,” he recalled.
Bruno said he used to go to the races with his two older brothers every week and his passion for the sport grew from there.
“I started going to the track and taking photos when I was 17,” he said.
“I used to love going to the races and just watching the horses. I’d shoot a couple of rolls of film every time.
“I never thought about a career in it at all. It was just my hobby at the time.”
Bruno’s career took a different track and he spent 25 years making a name in the fashion industry.
He started working in retail and then opened his own store in the Dandenong Hub Arcade in 1986 called Ultimate Male Fashions.
With his two brothers and a partner he opened two more outlets before things started going badly in the mid 1990s with the downturn of trade.
“I was going home pretty despondent. I started getting bored and then Maria said ‘why don’t you go and get a job and do your photography?’ I jumped at it,” he said.
“I was actually offered another job when I left the shop with a good salary, car, phone and everything, but I didn’t want to be trapped working seven days a week.
“Money wasn’t the issue and never has been. I started off doing a lot of work for just a credit in the paper. They discovered they liked my work and hence all these years later here I am, their main man,” he chuckled.
“Without Maria’s support it would have been a totally different story.”
Bruno still has a connection with the fashion industry and enjoys shooting fashion events when asked, but horse racing is his business.
He is the main photographer for the Winning Post and Turf Monthly, the largest racing publication in the country.
Even though Bruno is so highly regarded, the money is still relatively poor and he said he couldn’t provide for his family without Maria’s assistance.
“I’ve created a lifestyle, but you don’t see a lot photographers going to the races saying ‘gee I’m going to make a lot of money out of this’,” he said.
“If I’ve got the time I will do most photography jobs, but I do have the advantage of scheduling myself.”
Bruno regards himself as lucky, given he gets to follow his love of racing and attends the biggest events in Melbourne, interstate and overseas.
“Some people might regard that as a chore, but I love it,” he said.
He has seen all the champions and said that while star 1970’s three-year-old Grand Cidium and Makybe Diva are among the best, his all-time favourite is Sunline. A picture of the champion mare appears on his business card and Bruno said she had an aura about her that he had never experienced in another horse.
With the thrills of the sport goes a degree of sadness and Bruno admitted it was hard to distance himself from the emotion of witnessing a race fall or the death of a horse.
“I remember when Pittsburgh Phil collapsed in the straight at Sandown and died. I took a shot of the jockey, Rod Griffiths, kneeling down with his hand resting on the horse’s head. It just showed the emotion and the bond between jockey and horse. As tragic as it was, the image did tell a story,” he recalled.
His interest in racing led to owning horses as well.
His first, Silver Kells, was trained by Bob Armstrong and won six races including his first race (at Moe) by 10 lengths, but said the best one he had been involved with was Impulsive Risk.
Trained by Mick Kent and regularly ridden by Cranbourne jockey Mark Flaherty, it won at every city track and narrowly missed a run in the 1992 Melbourne Cup.
Bruno is a keen collector of racing books and publications and that spurred a desire to make sure that his own history of racing was recorded properly and accurately.
That desire sparked the idea to produce an annual book of Group 1 races called ‘This Racing Year’ that celebrates its fifth birthday this year.
“I like to collect history and put it down in print so our kids and generations to come can sit down and see what it was like back then. That’s my legacy,” he said.
“I can still see myself with a walking stick at 80 years of age standing at the winning post taking photos. When you’re enjoying yourself there are no limitations.”
