Photographer Brian J. Nelson is a friend of mine. I’ve known him since we were rookie-status media types in the mid-1980s, sleeping in cars and scrambling for gas money. I knew him when he shot slides, when he had a real job, when his streetbike was an unholy fast 1986 GSX-R1100 with a very rude nickname, when he developed black and white at the track, when he would drive all day and all night powered only by a thermos of black coffee, when he didn’t wear that orange cap. I knew him when he was a dyed-in-the-wool Nikon guy—and I remember the jaw-drop moment when he spun on his heel and went Canon, like Marc Marquez leaving boat-anchor Honda for Ducati. We were once rural Minnesota kids that somehow found ourselves in motorcycle racing.

Like my wife, I can usually judge BJN’s mood by the way he’s walking, from 45 feet away.

A busload of pretenders with rented glass and the latest copy of Photoshop have tried to take his gig over the years. Frauds, credential collectors—nearly every one of them. And every one who tried to steal his clients went home defeated, exhausted and sunburned. These days they autofocus their way through golf tournaments or high school games, selling pictures of Johnny to grandma. They smile and swallow all the kudos the grandparents dole out, but hope BJN doesn't show up at the next game making them irrelevant at that sport too.

BJN has crisscrossed the country more times than some medium-haul truckers, hitting every Superbike round on the schedule year after year after punishing year. Next year will be his 40th shooting professional races. As I’ve told him many times, motorcycle racing owes Brian J. Nelson a debt for his sacrifice and dedication it will never be able to repay.

After a couple of decades, it would be easy—understandable, even—for BJN to take a race off, grab a shot “good enough,” and head to dinner. After 39 years, who could blame him?

Instead, he’s still in the media center at 11:30 p.m. on a Sunday night and won't leave until 2:30 am Monday morning, fulfilling commitments for clients far and wide. And he’ll submit a photograph like the one below—one that, if one of those credential collectors had shot it, would be printed 20x30 and framed over their fireplace, with stories about “that one perfect frame” told for the rest of their sad, mundane pretending-to-be-a-photographer-as-good-as-Brian life. Because it’s perfectly exposed, perfectly lit, perfectly timed, and captures the beauty and violence of motorcycle racing in a single frame.

For everyone else, it’s the one shot they spend a career chasing.

For Brian J Nelson, it’s just another Saturday.