Thank you, Vinny.
The legendary photographer based in Oceanside, CA. Vincent Knakal aka “Vinny” has left this world in an unexpected moment, like if there was such an expected time for those who you love. Anyways, I have a story on Vinny that I would like to share…
I can say that if I need to pinpoint where my career began then I would say that at my first mint400 coverage, the exact same time where I met Vinny.
Vinny on his habitat.
Vinny’s influence started way back before my career was even a thing, back in the day, when I was in college taking snaps with a point-and-shoot camera that I basically stole from my girlfriend-now-wife. After every race, I visited race-dezert only to look at the photo galleries, noticing right away that the madmedia’s credited ones were my favorites by far, inspiring me to get at that level.
Because of his work is that I purchased my first DSLR camera, read every tutorial available online getting my first assignments that led me straight to the Mint 400, straight into Vinny’s territory. In fact, on my first time there I was able to introduce myself while we were shooting on contingency day and happen that we found the same spot at the same time, on top of a bridge we weren’t supposed to be which the security of that place kick us out shortly after… I know, a real bromance story.
“Who is this guy?” - he asked the first time they saw my photos at the madmedia office, next year I was part of the team and I was able to fully get to know, learn and work with my favorite off-road photographer of all time.
Thanks Caleb Norman for the photo.
I’m a believer on the philosophy that “if you’re the smartest guy in the room, you’re in the wrong room” so with that in mind, I used every opportunity I had to be around Vinny, absorbing as much information as possible, learning the ways of the force* as we joked around. luckily for me, Vinny ended up being a fucking amazing person that understood me and my goals, so he decided to take me under his wing, creating a wonderful friendship that I will cherish forever.
*Matt Martelli used to say that I was Luke and he was Obi-Wan…
Thru’ the years, event after event, race after race, we created this tradition of editing our work together, always with a cup of something, most of the time box wine (please consider per-dium budgets) … so box wine nights became our thing where two colleagues and good friends worked together, always sharing our best work telling our battle-stories while also joking with our happy/funny/unfortunate moments/mistakes captured by our cameras.
smoke break I.
After finishing our edits for the day, an obligatory sesh in the parking lot of wherever-the-fuck we were at that moment in time; a beer, a joint and a friend after a hard day of work. We always agreed that those moments where like therapy for both of us, always talking, always sharing, always laughing.
Vinny had +1000’s of stories and jokes to share, thru the years I heard most, some of them several times but i didn’t care, i loved to hang out with my friend who probably also heard my stories quite a few times.
If you knew him, you knew about that one time he almost die getting ran over by a Class1 during a race story, for example…
Vinny hated for his equipment to get dirty to the point that he rather rent cameras than use his own (understandable when you see what professional cameras cost, obviously), so when this moment happened with his own camera made this moment very funny, you can see the fun he’s having in his eyes. This was the only time that he yelled at me that i remember. I had to crack a joke but my timing wasn’t the best. Of course he was being totally cool 10 seconds afterwards.
smoke break II
Vinny and his golden-gun truck. He fucking loved his truck. We both shared a unreasonable love for our own trucks and the fact that we both owned the same truck-model at some point on our lives was really cool to share.
As the years passed by, the ‘depression’ topic slowly crawled more and more into our conversations, I mean, who the fuck isn’t depressed on 2025… so we tried to always stick with those good moments that make all this BS worth living for...
Mint400 2022 scouting day, now that i think about it, this was the only time in which we had a utv available to scout the racetrack, of course it was going to rain…
smoke break III
We had this inside-joke that he was going to finally quit this mint 400, and by this i mean every. single. mint400. He confessed that the idea of bringing me in was in part so he can retire from the off-road scene and since my very first mint400 on his team he told me that he was going to quit, “My last mint… hopefully” said year after year and every time we laughed about it. This last mint he didn’t cracked the joke as usual.
The truth is that I can keep speaking about Vinny for hours and hours but I will only do that with those who know and want to talk about him, feel free to reach out, let’s celebrate his life among friends, the way Vinny would like it.
last smoke break.
I miss you so much brother, your legacy will live forever with me and my work.
Thank you for everything.
