Ray Monahan
It's with a heavy heart and a tear in my eye as I gather some memories of Ray Monahan who passed away yesterday.
I got to know him almost 40 years ago when I visited his father Phil's car collection in the showroom in Dundalk. Ray was the son of an avid car collector and got to live a life that a lot of us could only dream about.
He had the perfect balance of devilment and decency to be one of the soundest fukkers ( sorry Ray ) you could meet.
We became good friends when I started to photograph tarmac rallies up and down the country in the late 80s / early 90s. There was a great crew from County Louth involved in the sport back then with the likes of Damien Keenan and Michael Farrell (RIP). Michael might have had to wait a bit longer for his first outright victory, after a timekeeping error on the 1993 Moate Single Stage Rally, were it not for Ray persuading the Clerk Of The Course to drop the time penalties that were imposed on Farrell. "He was fastest on the stages and thats where a rally should be won or lost" was the comment that he made and it summed up the character of the man.
We both stopped going to the rallies around the same time and even though we didn't meet as often, I always felt better for the time spent with him.
In latter years I've diverted my camera to focus on shooting classic cars and Ray was instrumental in lining up some fabulous shoots for me.
The last time I spoke to him, at a car meet in Dundalk a few weeks ago we discussed getting all the cars together for a megashoot. Alas, it was not meant to be.
Read MoreI got to know him almost 40 years ago when I visited his father Phil's car collection in the showroom in Dundalk. Ray was the son of an avid car collector and got to live a life that a lot of us could only dream about.
He had the perfect balance of devilment and decency to be one of the soundest fukkers ( sorry Ray ) you could meet.
We became good friends when I started to photograph tarmac rallies up and down the country in the late 80s / early 90s. There was a great crew from County Louth involved in the sport back then with the likes of Damien Keenan and Michael Farrell (RIP). Michael might have had to wait a bit longer for his first outright victory, after a timekeeping error on the 1993 Moate Single Stage Rally, were it not for Ray persuading the Clerk Of The Course to drop the time penalties that were imposed on Farrell. "He was fastest on the stages and thats where a rally should be won or lost" was the comment that he made and it summed up the character of the man.
We both stopped going to the rallies around the same time and even though we didn't meet as often, I always felt better for the time spent with him.
In latter years I've diverted my camera to focus on shooting classic cars and Ray was instrumental in lining up some fabulous shoots for me.
The last time I spoke to him, at a car meet in Dundalk a few weeks ago we discussed getting all the cars together for a megashoot. Alas, it was not meant to be.
