“Unseated,” photographed by Skip Dickstein for the Times Union. The image also appeared in BloodHorse.

Sometimes, they say, it’s better to be lucky than good. Longtime horse racing photographer Skip Dickstein would say it’s better to be both.

“Being in the right place at the right time comes in real handy when you’re covering horse racing,” says the Malta resident. “But I’ve always used the philosophy that you make your own luck. You can fail to plan or plan to fail.”

That thinking certainly applied last August 31, the second-to-last day of the 2025 Saratoga racing meet, when Dickstein was covering the Jockey Club Gold Cup Stakes for the Times Union. As the horses were coming to the eighth pole, one horse pushed the rest toward the rail, causing congestion, and ultimately, unseating jockey Irad Ortiz, Jr. from his saddle. Dickstein, at the ready on the outside rail, didn’t look up from his camera; instead, he kept on shooting as Ortiz bounced from his horse to the back of another horse, and ultimately to the ground. For this shot of the action, Dickstein won 2025’s prestigious Media Eclipse Award for Outstanding Photography.

Ortiz, too, was both lucky and good that day. “If nothing else, Irad showed what an extraordinary athlete he is to be able to do what he did without getting seriously injured,” Dickstein says. “Horse racing is a dangerous sport, but these guys are such extraordinary athletes that it reduces the danger. These 1,200-pound horses are ready to run—that’s where their spirit is. For the jockeys to be able to corral that spirit and focus the horse is, to me, incredible.”