When I first heard about the annual Oatman bed races, I knew I had to be there. Months before the event, I had already mapped out my route and circled the date. In my head, I imagined beds flying down Route 66—sheets billowing, feathered pillows exploding into the desert air like some slapstick Western fever dream.
Reality, of course, had its own rules.
The race format was more structured: teams of five, individually timed, sprinting a wheeled bed down the street. At the far end, they had to quickly make the unmade bed before racing it back to the starting line. Fastest team wins. After learning this, my cinematic vision of crashing mattresses and airborne bedding quickly… softened (no pun intended).
But I had committed. And I was going to photograph it.
I planned to swing through Kingman for a couple of hours before heading into Oatman. The morning drive was calm and cinematic—sunrise spilling over desert mountains, long shadows stretching across the highway. I stopped at a lookout over the Colorado River and used the moment to test my new-to-me KOWA Six, loaded with Portra 400. It felt right to let medium format breathe in that landscape.
I had just picked up this KOWA Six and wanted to learn its quirks. As I would later discover, 1/250th on my copy has a noticeable trigger lag. The exposures weren’t blurry or out of focus—they just fired late. More than once, I captured pavement or an unintended tilt instead of the scene I framed. Frustrating, yes. But part of the learning curve.
On the bright side, using an iPhone light meter app worked beautifully. My exposures were solid, and that small win kept me motivated.
Kingman is always a nostalgic stop for me. I’ve passed through before on two-wheel and three-wheel rides, but this time I wandered on foot, taking it in slowly through the waist-level finder. I would’ve loved to linger longer, but Oatman’s single road can bottleneck quickly on event days. Timing mattered.
By the time I arrived, the sun was high and unforgiving. No clouds meant a flat blue sky and harsh shadows carving up the wooden facades. It felt like a true high-noon Western—honestly, perfect for Oatman. The burros roamed freely. The crowds were warm, sweaty, and buzzing with anticipation.
For this portion of the day, I switched to the Leica Q3, set to the Greg Williams black-and-white profile. I didn’t want to wrestle with color in post. I wanted grit, contrast, immediacy. Black and white suited the mood—the dust, the textures, the timelessness of the town.
Before the races began, a cowboy shootout performance by a group from Prescott entertained the crowd. The audio system struggled a bit, but the costuming and theatrical energy carried it. Boots stomped. Revolvers fired. Tourists leaned in.
And Then… Santa
The races kicked off—announced and started by none other than Santa Claus. Only in a Route 66 ghost town does that feel completely normal.
Teams with names like Minnesota Day Care, The Nickell Family, The Shotgun Queens, Sheet Happens, and Breaking Bed sprinted down the narrow stretch of road. Photographing it proved trickier than expected. The course was short, the crowd dense. Good angles required constant movement—zooming with my feet, weaving through spectators, staying mindful not to block anyone’s view.
Patience became the strategy. Move quietly. Anticipate moments. Let the scene unfold.
Thankfully, there were multiple heats, which gave me several chances to experiment with framing and timing. Photography, after all, is about iteration—finding new ways to tell the same story.
Looking Ahead
By the end of the day, expectations aside, it felt like a win. Not because beds exploded into cinematic chaos—but because the experience delivered something better: character, texture, unpredictability.
Oatman may be small, but on days like this, it feels alive.
And I’m already looking forward to the next stop down Route 66.
More information via the Oatman Chamber of Commerce
Bonus Photos from the KOWA 6
